Dual system of vocational education and training becomes a model for export

A Polish delegation has spent a week in the Saarland finding out about the dual system of vocational education and training. It is to become a model for vocational education and training in Poland.

How does dual education and training work in the Saarland? How are pupils and vocational school teachers trained? A delegation of eighteen from the Polish region of Podkarpackie - a partner region of the Saarland in south-west Poland - sought answers to these questions as part of a one week visit to the Saarland.

The purpose of the visit by the delegation, largely comprising heads of vocational schools and vocational school teachers, was to gather impressions of vocational education and training under the dual system in order to provide ideas to the Ministry for Education for making proposals for adoption in their home country of Poland. In a similar way to France, Poland has a more theory-heavy vocational education and training system. There, training mostly takes place over a period of 2 to 3 years in full-time schools and then concludes with a professional examination.

Malgorzata Rauch is curator for training at the Wojwodschaft Podkarpackie and is responsible for both training in schools and teacher training. She also sees good opportunities for greater integration of the German system in Poland. "At the moment in Poland we are in the middle of a school reform, as a result of which much is under review," says Rauch.

She says that, amongst other things, teacher training as well as vocational education and training also needs to be reformed. "We therefore want to see for ourselves how the system in the Saarland works at a local level." Besides visiting the vocational training centre in St. Wendel, the main focus of the teaching seminars in Völklingen was learn about the training of vocational school teachers.

The teaching seminar trains teachers for all 20 vocational schools in the Saarland. The teaching there covers 18 vocational specialisms as well as 13 general education subjects. For the Polish delegates it was important to find out about the curriculum forming the basis of the teacher training and examinations, while they also found out from prepared presentations about the materials teachers work with in the classes.

Stanislawa Pepera, Head of the Vocational School No. 2 Rzeszow commented that it was now important to gain an overall impression and bring positive ideas together. She explained that curator Rauch would then be able to submit these at the end of the visit to the ministry in Warsaw.

For Rauch, however, the visit is not just about centrally-controlled reforms. She also sees opportunities for adapting content at the local level: "We are looking very closely at what can be changed and introduced without huge investment."

Rauch also raised the quality of teacher training as an important point. She said it was "an important link in the training System". Bärbel Binkle, head of the teaching seminar in Völklingen also shares this opinion: "Teacher training makes a significant contribution to the quality of the location," she said.

Stanislawa Pepera says that there are very sound reasons for making vocational education and training more attractive in Poland. "School pupils are all pushing just to get on to a degree, for most of them the skilled crafts are no longer interesting."

Rauch commented that training actually also exists in Poland which links practical and theoretical content but that this was not comparable with dual education and training.

Education Minister Ulrich Commercon (SPD) proudly concluded that it was good to see how highly dual education and training is valued.