Impulses from a look back

The transformation process of vocational education and training since reunification is the main focus of the October issue of the specialist periodical "Vocational Training in Research and Practice – BWP" published by the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB). Analyses, data and first-hand accounts recall the developments, help to reflect them from today's perspective and provide impulses for further development. BIBB Research Director Reinhold Weiß summarises: "The first years were painful, but the alignment process between East and West has made great progress." After more than 20 years, however, it is worth it to reflect as well on missed opportunities of reform. Because, says Weiß: "Little or nothing is left of the former GDR's flagship products in vocational education and training."

A special approach to looking back has been chosen in the currents BWP issue: Five contemporary witnesses who helped shape vocational education in the years of transition and beyond dare to offer an assessment from today's perspective. Being one of these witnesses, Prof. Dr. Hermann Schmidt, the long-time former Secretary General of the BIBB, remembers the adoption of the West German Vocational Training Act by the GDR People's Chamber even before the Reunification Treaty and the, according to Schmidt, "chaotic" introduction of the dual system in its West German form. His conclusion: "I admire the enormous adaptive capacity of the vocational schools and the numerous independent establishments in the new federal states, who did a lot of smoothening that in-company training simply could not achieve, and the amazing development work of the chambers, who created in a very short time the structural backbone of the dual system in the form of a registration, supervision and examination infrastructure without which all the efforts in the companies would have been in vain."

The second perspective of the BWP focuses on the lines of development up until the present time. The changes which have arisen since 1990 in the occupational structure and for the women and men in East and West Germany become particularly clear in a study of the so-called "tertiarisation" of dual vocational education and training, meaning the shift from production occupations to service occupations:
While the share of newly concluded training contracts in the production occupations was just under 57% in 1993 in East Germany (West Germany: about 45%), they have been displaced by the service occupations in the year 2013 with more than 56% (West Germany: about 60%). This means that the conditions in East Germany with regard to this structural aspect have become aligned with the West German situation in a relatively short period of time.

If we look at this development differentiated by gender, differences become apparent as well: Both in East and in West Germany, the proportion of women in the production occupations has remained constantly at the same low level of between about 12% and 15% during the above-mentioned period of time.

In contrast, the proportion of men with newly concluded training contracts in the production occupations has declined significantly in the country as a whole; in East Germany, though, the shift is even markedly more pronounced. There, the proportion in production occupations fell by 22 percentage points during the observation period, while the decrease in West Germany was "just" by twelve percentage points. This is first and foremost a sign of structural change and the trend towards a service society.

Further information can be found in the article "Tertiarisation of initial vocational education and training – Changes in the structure of occupations for men and women after reunification" in: BWP issue 5/2015. This article is available online free of charge at www.bibb.de/bwp-5-2015 (German only).

The complete BWP issue 5/2015 is subject to a charge and can be ordered at www.bwp-zeitschrift.de.

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