Print version Recommend this page Press release
32/ 2012
Bonn, 05.09.2012
Lines of development of vocational education and training - BIBB presents its 2011/2012 Annual Report
How will vocational education and training in Germany continue to develop? How can future-oriented initial and advanced training be structured? The main focuses which the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) has stipulated in its capacity as a centre of competence for initial and continuing VET in order to identify and help shape such developments via research projects, studies and analyses are revealed in the institute's new 2011/2012 Annual Report. "We have made considerable progress with the equivalence of vocational and higher education, with the permeability of educational pathways, with the improvement of vocational orientation, with career entry support and with the increase in international cooperation", explains BIBB President Friedrich Hubert Esser. "Dual vocational education and training 'Made in Germany' is considered to be a successful model the world over."
Professor Esser went on to state that BIBB would be concentrating on four areas of activity in the future - the introduction of the German Qualifications Framework, the further development of vocational training and the interlinking of VET with the higher education system, the development of untapped areas of educational and training potential and the expansion of continuing vocational training. "Our aim in future is to continue to generate innovative impetuses in order to strengthen interaction between academic research, policy and practice within the field of vocational education and training. This is the real recipe for the success of German VET", he stressed.
The chapter on the Training market and employment system contained within the Annual Report mainly focuses on the topic of "entry to training and employment". Results from the BIBB Training Panel and the Employee Survey are amongst the vehicles used to show the steps which companies are undertaking in order to cover their requirements for skilled workers and to illustrate the differing opportunities of finding appropriate employment experienced by men and women who have completed vocational education and training.
The section of the Annual Report dealing with Modernisation of an effective training system concentrates on quality development within vocational education and training. To this end, a total of 21 training occupations were either restructured or underwent major updating during 2011 and 2012. BIBB pilot projects relating to quality assurance, heterogeneity and sustainable development in vocational education and training are already ongoing, the objective being to map out possible exemplary innovative solutions to content and structural improvement in vocational education and training.
The chapter on Lifelong learning, permeability and equivalence of educational pathways places its main emphasis on current developments in the German Qualifications Framework, the alignment of VET towards competence orientation, the change in continuing training provision and the increasing significance of dual courses of higher education study.
The chapter on Diversity of vocational education and training highlights the extensive activities undertaken by BIBB in pursuit of its guiding principle of providing everyone with an opportunity to enter working life wherever possible. The main focus here is on a vocational orientation programme for which BIBB has provided administrative and technical support and which has so far enabled around 370,000 pupils to gain an insight into the real world of employment via work experience placements.
BIBB also accords a high level of priority to its activities for the Internationalisation of vocational education and training. International VET cooperation has been expanded accordingly. The Annual Report provides a summary of international cooperation agreements and VET programmes entered into by BIBB. One new feature is a BIBB-housed Internet portal to accompany the so-called "Recognition Act", which came into force on 1 April and aims to improve recognition of foreign vocational qualifications.
The 2011/2012 Annual Report is available for download free of charge on the BIBB website at www.bibb.de/jahresbericht.
A printed version can also be ordered free of charge from:
Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB)
Section 1.4 - Publications Management
53142 Bonn
vertrieb@bibb.de
Order number: 09.193
ISBN: 978-3-88555-927-6
Reprint free of charge - voucher copy requested.
