Print version Recommend this page Press release
06/ 2008
Bonn, 12.02.2008
BIBB recommends optimizing Training Place Programme for Eastern Germany
Despite the demographic decline in the number of school-leavers and the upswing on Germany's labour and training place markets, the special conditions on the training place market in Germany's eastern states will necessitate renewing the Training Place Programme for Eastern Germany every year until at least 2010. Germany's federal and state governments agree on this. However, how can future editions of the Training Place Programme for Eastern Germany be adapted to these new conditions? Which measures would be wise for making even more efficient use of funds and for ensuring long-term success? The Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) has issued corresponding recommendations in a new publication. These recommendations were developed on the basis of an evaluation of training place programmes for eastern Germany that were implemented between 2002 and 2004. The evaluation was conducted on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
The most important recommendations:
- More aggressive efforts should be made to ensure that participants are offered an in-company training place after completion of the programme. Some of the firms that provided pre-vocational traineeships indicated that they were willing to offer participants a regular training place after a certain period of training. According to the BIBB recommendation, financial planning security would make it easier for the programme sponsors to approach enterprises offering pre-vocational traineeships about the possibility of offering their pre-vocational trainees a regular in-house vocational training place. It would be even better if contracts for government-assisted pre-vocational training were to include a clause on offering participants a regular training following completion of the pre-vocational training.
- The number of 3-year vocational training programmes for occupations with long-term employment prospects should be increased. The comparatively large share of 2-year training programmes - which neither reflect participants' abilities nor offer sufficient job prospects - should be reduced.
- The very low training allowances currently being paid should be raised to the levels paid pursuant to Book II of the German Social Code to disadvantaged youths who undergo extra-company vocational training. These rates have gone unchanged since the 1990s and generally should be adjusted to reflect rising costs and the growing demands placed on the training provided. In this connection, the financial contributions that participating firms could make should be examined.
- These training place programmes usually support occupation-specific practical training in 'networks' of extra-company vocational training centres and enterprises that offer pre-vocational training. The exchange between these learning venues urgently needs to be improved and training content must be better coordinated.
- For programme sponsors, fostering and improving the quality of in-company vocational training without losing firms that provide prevocational training is a tightrope walk. They need good and practicable instruments for this. Optimizing the range of services on offer would improve the quality of training and thus increase the chances that participants are offered a training place for regular in-company vocational training.
- In future, training place programmes must be ready to deal with target groups with different priorities. These include, for example, the growing number of unplaced applicants from previous years. Additionally, the general exclusion from financial assistance of unplaced applicants with qualification to attend university is no longer in keeping with the times, particularly when it is applied to female applicants who have no training place. They should also be offered the opportunity to receive support in the form of placement in training for an occupation that requires completion of formal vocational training and offers good prospects for the future.
- The evaluation conducted by BIBB shows that the training place programmes for eastern Germany have the potential to foster training structures. They help induce firms that are authorized to provide vocational training but have not yet done so to start offering in-house vocational training. Future programmes should be designed to increase this potential.
- Using the designation "individual who is disadvantaged in the marketplace" for participants in these programmes is not fair to either the members of this target group - the majority of whom have completed intermediate secondary school - or to the enterprises and programme sponsors. This negative term fosters stigmatization. It should not be used in future.
Government spending for the training place programme for eastern Germany which generated some 10,000 additional training places totalled approximately € 135 million in 2007. The federal government provides half of this funding. The other half is provided by the eastern states. Plans currently foresee reducing the number of subsidized training places to reflect demographic developments and actual need in the respective area.
The findings from the evaluation and BIBB's recommendations are presented in detail in:
Klaus Berger, Uta Braun, Vera Drinkhut, Klaus Schöngen: Wirksamkeit staatlich finanzierter Ausbildung. Ausbildungsplatzprogramm Ost - Evaluation, Ergebnisse und Empfehlungen. Bonn/Bielefeld 2007.
This BIBB publication can be ordered from:
W. Bertelsmann Verlag GmbH & Co. KG
Postfach 10 06 33, 33506 Bielefeld
Tel.: +49 (0)521/ 9 11 01-11
Fax: +49 (0)521 / 9 11 01-19
E-Mail: service@wbv.de
Internet: http://www.wbv.de/
ISBN: 978-3-7639-1098-4
Catalogue No. 110.487
256 pages, Price: 22,90 Euro
Further information is available from :
Klaus Berger, Tel.: +49 (0) 228 / 107-1320, E-mail: berger@bibb.de berger@bibb.de
