Print version Recommend this page Press release
47/ 2003
Bonn, 18.12.2003
Nation-wide vocational education and training standards
Steering Committee of the Federal Institute for Vocational Training adopts recommendation
At its meeting on 12 December 2003 the Steering Committee of the Federal Institute for Vocational Training (Bundesinstitut für Berufsbildung - BIBB) 01 discussed nation-wide vocational education and training standards and adopted the following recommendation to be submitted to the federal government:
"It makes neither educational nor economic sense for the federal government to delegate responsibilities in the field of out-of-school vocational education and training to state governments or enable state governments to make arrangements in these areas which deviate from federal law. Nor do specific regional characteristics or efforts to retain competitiveness require or warrant such a delegation of powers.
The fragmentation of nation-wide vocational training standards would entail
- increased costs and organisational efforts for supraregional companies,
- more administrative work for public authorities, the need for costly updating and work-adjustment training,
- the loss of uniformity of vocational education and training,
- a restriction of professional mobility,
- the loss of legal security,
- the loss of acceptance of the dual system of vocational education and training in international competition,
- the loss of transparency, clarity and comparability,
- and hence, in the final analysis, the loss of training places.
It is not fragmentation that is needed, but rather an optimisation of certain features, and constant future adjustment, of the system to the economic, technical and societal environment. Changes in the constitutional responsibilities of the federal and state governments, however, are not needed to achieve this end.
For this reason the Steering Committee of the Federal Institute for Vocational Training calls on all those concerned strongly to defend the current system of allocation of responsibilities in the area of vocational education and training."
Background:
In Berlin, on 27 March 2003, the heads of state governments adopted guidelines for negotiations with the federal government on the subject of modernising the federal structure in Germany. These guidelines propose that the state governments be granted the right of access to suitable issues of concurrent legislative powers. According to this proposal, the Federal Government would retain its right to issue regulations, but state governments could pass laws that deviated from these federal regulations. This would also affect out-of-school vocational education and training.
