STARTtraining: Fascination of Skilled Crafts

From May to October 2022 the partners in the Alliance for Initial and Continuing Education and Training again want to use a range of activities at both national and regional level to inform young people and their parents about dual training and continuing education, and specifically about the four key topics of: "careers guidance and placements", "attractiveness of training", "diversity of target groups", and "second chance placements".

The launch event in September 2022 in Trier was preceded by a themed week to mark the opening of the new education and training centre in Trier. For Holger Schwannecke, General Secretary of the German Confederation of Skilled Crafts (ZDH), the title "Fascination of Skilled Crafts" tells you all you need to know. "The new skilled crafts campus in Trier shows just how modern and innovative vocational education and training is. We want to use the 'Summer of Vocational Education and Training' to demonstrate exactly this to young people," explains Schwannecke.

The new skilled crafts campus in Trier shows just how modern and innovative vocational education and training is.

Holger Schwannecke, General Secretary of the German Confederation of Skilled Crafts

In Trier, alongside the ZDH General Secretary, Malu Dreyer, Minister President of Rhineland-Palatinate, and Professor Friedrich Hubert Esser, President of the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB), are also talking up vocational training. The new training year is just around the corner, but a lot of young people don't have the information they need about dual training opportunities because training fairs, placements and company visits had to be cancelled. In the last training year, in the skilled crafts alone, 18,600 training positions remained unfilled. In his video message for the "Summer of Vocational Education and Training", Chancellor Olaf Scholz also underlined how urgently Germany needs the skilled workers of the future for tackling major challenges such as climate change.

In the skilled crafts in particular, career and advancement opportunities have rarely been as good as they are today. BIBB President Professor Friedrich Hubert Esser and ZDH General Secretary Holger Schwannecke discuss how you can launch your career today with pupils and trainees in Trier. This mainly covers the opportunities offered by vocational education and training – for everybody and, in particular today, in light of the huge range of imminent future challenges we face in the areas of digitalisation, climate protection, the energy and mobility revolution, smart homes and e-health.

ZDH General Secretary Schwannecke went on to explain. "Vocational education and training in the skilled crafts sector is future-oriented and offers young people a modern and firm foundation for starting out in their professional lives. The examples from the Trier region – which are representative of our training locations right across Germany – show that learning in skilled craft training companies, vocational schools and education and training centres is individual, agile and that every day is different. The focus is on practice. These training locations are where young trainees create the basis for their own career planning. For those starting out now, the offers of higher-level vocational education and training mean that in future not just all doors, but quite literally all pathways, are open for directly helping to manage challenges such as the climate transition, sustainable construction and digitalisation."