Print version Recommend this page Press release
40/ 2003
Bonn, 31.10.2003
Improve regional offerings of in-company training places with STARegio!
Responding to Germany's increasingly tight training place market, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) has launched the STARegio programme, designed to improve vocational training structures in regions with special assistance needs. STARegio aims primarily at helping in particular (small) firms in innovative sectors develop their vocational training capabilities, improving unfavourable regional balances in the supply of and demand for training places, and, in doing so, making use of existing reserves of train-ing places. The Federal Institute for Vocational Training (BIBB) will conduct and provide flanking support for the STARegio programme which was presented to the public at a voca-tional training conference in Gelsenkirchen on October 21, 2003. STARegio will assist projects that open up new opportunities for companies - both those that do not provide in-company vocational training as well as those that do - to start offering vocational training or to expand existing training capacity. The programme will give priority to regions in western Germany which have seen a disproportionately large decline in the number of training places on offer. STARegio has been outfitted with a total of € 25 mil-lion in funding, financed in part through the European Social Fund. The programme is slated to run through 2007.
STARegio assistance will be provided for:
- Innovative initiatives to make additional training places available in individual regions - particularly in western Germany - where potential for economic development exists but the number of available training places falls far short of demand;
- Efforts to organize and coordinate new vocational training alliances and expand ex-isting vocational training alliances between regional players such as firms, employment offices, professional associations, chambers of commerce, trade unions, employers, in-dustrial development corporations and the like;
- Efforts to set up and expand vocational training networks with an eye to increasing the number of in-company training places being offered regionally;
- External training management and coaching services to help companies and relieve them of administrative work associated with in-company training.
The STARegio programme has already produced four handbooks that are available online. These German-language handbooks contain information on existing publicly-funded pro-grammes aimed at fostering vocational training and provide answers to a variety of training-related questions. The respective focus of these handbooks:
- Publicly-funded programmes to foster vocational training
- Organizing vocational training alliances
- Handbook on coaching vocational training initiatives
- Legal guide for offering vocational training within the framework of a vocational training alliance.
Further information on the STARegio programme, the funding guidelines for parties wishing to participate in the programme, the application form for STARegio funding and the above-mentioned handbooks are available in German at www.bibb.de/de/staregio.htm
Your points of contact at BIBB for details about the STARegio programme: Werner Markert, Tel.: +49 228 / 107-1322, Thorsten Brand, Tel.: +49 228 / 107-2003, Barbara Schulte, Tel.: +49 228/107-2031. E-mail: staregio@bibb.de
