Virtual Competence Teams in Vocational Education and Training

The changing demands placed on vocational schools have triggered a process of restructuring across Europe. The call for a more flexible organisational structure is to be met by granting greater autonomy. Denmark and the Netherlands have already granted vocational schools a high degree of autonomy. In Germany, such extensive legal autonomy is precluded by the constitutional requirement set out in Article 7(1) of the Basic Law. Various federal states, including the State of Bremen, have developed models – falling short of the threshold for legal autonomy – to expand the scope of action of vocational schools towards regional vocational training centres. These regional vocational training centres are intended, on the one hand, to fulfil the state’s educational and qualification mandate as centres of innovation and expertise; on the other hand, they are to go beyond this by identifying sector-specific qualification needs in the region and developing and cooperatively delivering programmes to fill gaps in the field of continuing vocational training. This also includes a focus on entrepreneurial concepts and attitudes.

The project forms part of the ‘Qualification Initiative for Structural Change’. The establishment and development of centres of excellence as part of a regional network has been underway in the State of Bremen since 2000 with the aim of improving sector- and company-specific training and further education programmes. This must always be linked to the creation and safeguarding of future-proof jobs. Centres of excellence are established as knowledge-transfer institutions based on their key areas of focus.

Achievements

With the help of virtual centres of expertise, which cooperate with external partners both across schools and across sectors, existing student-run companies and partnerships have been expanded and further developed, whilst also initiating new projects in which economic, pedagogical-didactic, scientific and subject-specific competences are temporarily brought together – for example, within the framework of client commissions. This corresponds to the basic model of a virtual enterprise, in which legally independent companies, institutions and individuals, each with their respective core competencies, provide a service based on a shared interest. The objectives of the project were:

• To intensify and expand the transfer of know-how within the region

• Embedding entrepreneurial thinking and action in vocational schools

• To initiate, trial and institutionalise innovative forms of work and business

• Introducing and embedding professional project management methods in the curriculum of vocational schools

• Fostering cooperation between schools, further education and academia to promote synergy and the pooling of resources

• Defining and monitoring quality standards relating to project management

• Use of innovative teaching and learning methods to support lifelong learning

• New forms of certification to support mobility

• Improving equal opportunities in line with gender mainstreaming by facilitating access for girls and young women to innovative forms of learning and working.