VET and digitalisation

Vocational schools undergo a digital update - schools and local government investing six-figure sums.

Digitalisation is finding its way into a multitude of areas of life and into many occupational profiles. This is a situation to which vocational school centres in the local government district of Esslingen need to adjust. Six-figure sums are currently being invested as training is upgraded to meet the digital challenge. The aim is for schools to cooperate via a so-called cloud computing network.

'Smart Home' is being developed as a laboratory at the Friedrich Ebert School in Esslingen-Zell, and the Max Eyth School in Kirchheim is working on a simulated production environment. Both of these projects have been presented to the district council's Culture and Schools Committee. The Philipp Matthäus Hahn School in Nürtingen is seeking to use examples from the automobile industry to tackle the topic of digitalisation and also plans to cooperate with training programmes in commercial occupations.

Council Leader Heinz Einiger believes that the digitalisation campaign being pursued by the vocational schools will be enormously significant in terms of retaining the competitiveness of the location and securing a supply of skilled workers. His view is that such networking arrangements could bring benefits to all eight vocational schools and to the various training programmes they offer.