Print version Recommend this page Press release
48/ 2008
Bonn, 11.12.2008
The competence of training personnel: The basis for the quality of vocational education and training
The president of the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB), Manfred Kremer, says it is urgently necessary that skill and competence standards be developed for vocational training personnel. He also urges the creation and advancement of an infrastructure in which education service providers can give small and medium-sized enterprises in particular strong support with quality development and assurance in initial and continuing in-company vocational training. The reason: Mastering the many challenges facing 'dual' vocational training (which combines part-time vocational schooling with practical work experience) depends "greatly on the quality of the work done by and the competence of the trainers and the skilled workers who provide instruction," as Kremer writes in the latest issue of the BIBB journal Berufsbildung in Wissenschaft und Praxis - BWP (Vocational Training in Research and Practice).
However, Kremer continues, such instruments and standards exist "only in rudimentary form" in out-of-school vocational training and in-company vocational training, with the exception of the planned re-introduction of an updated Ordinance on Trainer Aptitude (AEVO). Given the demands that the working world places on the quality of vocational education and training, "this could become the Achilles' heel of the German vocational training system", Kremer fears.
BIBB's president advocates introducing a multi-level national continuing education system for vocational training personnel. "This approach is well suited to establishing skill standards for vocational training personnel who work in various positions and provinces." Kremer is optimistic that it will be possible in the further course of BIBB's already advanced talks with the social partners to "coordinate and integrate these provisions into an integrated concept in a way that gives rise to multi-level development paths with possibilities for credit transfer."
Above and beyond a formal continuing training concept however, further efforts will be needed in order to make visible the teaching skills that vocational training personnel have acquired in the course of the training process. Targeted assistance and the systematic registration of these informally acquired skills would particularly benefit skilled workers who provide vocational instruction and who play a fundamental role in the provision of in-company vocational training.
Further information is available at www.bwp-zeitschrift.de
The latest issue (No. 6/2008) of the BIBB journal Berufsbildung in Wissenschaft und Praxis - BWP (Vocational Training in Research and Practice) focuses on "Training instruction personnel". This publication can be ordered for € 7.90 a copy from the W. Bertelsmann Verlag publishing house at service@wbv.de .
