18 and 19 September 2014, Berlin, Germany

Shyamal Majumdar, Head of UNESCO-UNEVOC and Jan Ebben, Programme Expert, participated in the 7th BIBB Congress on “Structuring Vocational Education and Training in a more Attractive Way – Facilitating Greater Permeability” held in Berlin, Germany on 18 and 19 September 2014. Among the 800 participants were representatives from various levels of government, social partners, secondary schools, higher education and industry. Also in attendance were a number of delegations from BIBB’s international partner organizations.

Participants in the conference confirmed that there is a great need to make TVET more attractive and that one key to attractiveness lies in the provision of open onward pathways to higher education and lifelong learning.

The German Minister of Education and Research (BMBF), Johanna Wanka, emphasized in her opening address that SMEs will be needing 200,000 technically and managerially qualified young people to succeed retiring entrepreneurs and top executives. To meet this need, TVET will have to become more flexible and integrate higher education.

The case for flexible pathways was reinforced in the closing session, where renowned youth researcher Klaus Hurrelmann showed how young people of “Generation Y” make their educational and career decisions very carefully and tactically, that they insist on attractive options, and typically avoid choices that appear one-dimensional and restrictive. Congress participants concluded that an attractive TVET system must be one that is open to choices, modular, integrating theory and practice and interdisciplinary.