Print version Recommend this page Press release
16/ 2009
Bonn, 21.04.2009
Put potential for flexibility in initial and continuing vocational training in SMEs to use - BIBB conference presents innovative projects
Due to its close ties to the employment system, Germany's 'dual' vocational training system (which combines part-time vocational schooling with practical work experience) is particularly subject to a continual need for change and innovation. Occupations that require completion of formal vocational training that was designed with a flexible and open structure are intended to help guarantee high-quality, need-based training for young trainees that will also ensure a smooth transition from initial vocational training to continuing training. Vocational training experts from research and day-to-day practice documented and discussed how this potential is successfully being put to use in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) at the Potential for Flexibility in Initial and Continuing Vocational Training conference which the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) held in Bonn-Bad Godesberg on 22 and 23 April. This conference marked the end of a pilot project programme by the same name which the Federal Ministry of Education and Research has funded since 2002.
"We must support small and medium-sized enterprises' high level of involvement in training skilled workers - given that they train nearly three-fourths of our young workers," Manfred Kremer, president of the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training, emphasized in his opening address. "This will require developing and testing concepts that are workable in day-to-day practice given that many small and medium-sized enterprises do not have a training management system of their own."
The 28 projects that were funded through the BIBB pilot project programme provide interesting insights in this connection. They illustrate ways enterprises could be assisted in the development of innovative initial and continuing vocational training strategies through collaborative activities with partners in the dual vocational training system - such as schools and extra-company and inter-company education service providers. In addition to concepts for external education management systems, these projects also developed and tested modules for supplementary vocational qualifications, new learning and work concepts for the crafts and skilled trades, skill assessment and development processes and training concepts for skilled workers who provide instruction. An Innovation Market was held on both days of the conference where pilot projects made presentations on these and other topics.
Expert representatives from research and vocational training practice additionally discussed how these innovations could be successfully transferred to day-to-day VET practice. A discussion between European education experts on open structures from a European vantage point was one of the focal activities on the second day of the conference. Experience gathered in Denmark, Sweden, Austria and The Netherlands was compared with experience gathered in Germany. The discussion also focused on how different systems can learn and profit from one another.
These pilot projects are particularly important because they generated their findings in collaboration with partners from day-to-day VET practice, included education policy players in their work and were flanked by supporting scientific research. Some of the concepts and instruments developed in the course of the pilot project programme will be incorporated into and continued in structural programmes such as JOBSTARTER and JOBSTARTER CONNECT and in the training and skill upgrading training provided vocational instructors.
The conference Potential for Flexibility in Initial and Continuing Vocational Training - Fostering the Ability of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises to Provide In-company Vocational Training was held on 22 and 23 April at the Stadthalle in Bonn-Bad Godesberg, Koblenzer Str. 80.
Further information regarding the programme and the Innovation Market is available on the BIBB website at www.bibb.de/flexibilitaet
