The digital revolution has unleashed an unprecedented wave of rapid change and transformation across all industries, leaving Vocational Education and Training (VET) systems struggling to keep up. As technology evolves at an unprecedented pace, the impact on the workforce has been profound, posing a significant challenge to traditional VET systems. Failure to adapt and evolve in response to these changes could spell disaster, leaving workers ill-equipped to compete in the modern economy, with dire consequences for individuals, businesses, and society as a whole.
The world of work has undergone a massive digital transformation, affecting everything from working modes to job qualifications. Workers must constantly update their skills and competencies to remain competitive in the digital-driven job market. By 2025, 50% of all employees will require reskilling, and 40% of current workers will need to update their core skills within the next 5 years. And the COVID-19 pandemic has further accelerated the need for reskilling, upskilling, and redeployment of workforces. Germany, while not facing a nationwide skills shortage, is experiencing a dearth of qualified candidates in certain sectors. To overcome these shortages and maintain international competitiveness in the most promising talent, the German High-Tech Strategy 2025 has called for immediate action.
VET, specifically the dual-system VET, has long been the backbone of Germany’s success and competitiveness. However, the digital revolution has disrupted the workplace, demanding significant reform and modernization of VET to produce highly-qualified talents required by the digitalized workplace. Fortunately, Germany’s reputation for VET makes it the perfect candidate to redesign and upgrade VET for the digital age, becoming a blueprint for the reform and innovation of VET in the context of digitalization.
To accomplish this, German VET needs to improve its capacity for industrial service, with a focus on matching the vocational training market with the status of digital talents trained by VET. The matching problem has become more severe from 2010 to 2022, with two contradictory developments. On the one hand, some training occupations requiring skilled workers face recruitment problems due to a lack of qualified applicants, particularly in medium and small companies and IT sectors. On the other hand, other training occupations, in particular the new digital training occupations, suffer from a supply problem, with training applicants unable to find suitable training places that align with their target occupations. The digital maturity of companies directly impacts the vocational training of emerging occupations in training companies, and the information gap and view discrepancy regarding occupations between applicants and training companies further compound the mismatching.
The importance of digital talents cannot be overstated in defining a country’s digital progress and regional digital competitiveness in the modern era. Unfortunately, Germany is lagging behind in this aspect, which poses a significant threat to its competitiveness in the regional digital economy and social progress. In fact, Germany ranked 16th among the EU 27 countries in terms of human capital dimension, with only 49% of individuals possessing basic digital skills, which falls short of the EU average, and only 19% of individuals possessing above-basic digital skills. This is a concerning issue, as Germany strives to maintain its leading position in quality and technology by combining traditional competitive advantages with the latest technology.
Furthermore, there is a lack of emphasis on personal and social competencies in VET’s talent cultivation, which is a crucial aspect of digital talent in the digital age. Companies need to adopt new approaches to train their apprentices to think and work independently, and this needs to be promoted in training centers and vocational schools, otherwise, Germany’s competitiveness will suffer.
The decline of German VET is a concerning trend, as fewer young people are opting for vocational training and instead pursuing higher education. This shift in perception is partly due to the belief that the digitized workplace requires specific knowledge and skills for talented workers. The COVID-19 pandemic has also played a role in this phenomenon, highlighting the importance of digital competencies and remote work.
Furthermore, the decreasing participation of German companies in VET further exacerbates the problem. Small- and medium-sized companies lack the resources and conditions to conduct vocational training by themselves, while larger companies with trade unions are more likely to participate. The difficulty in recruiting suitable applicants further compounds the issue, and the decline in participation is evident across many economic sectors.
The world of work has been turned on its head by digital technology. Yet, shockingly, German VET organizations are lagging behind in their adoption of digital media. To equip tomorrow’s workforce with the skills necessary to navigate the digital age, VET must improve its digital level. To do this effectively, VET must bridge the gap between training and real-life work, and digital media is the key, serving as a bridge between vocational training, knowledge-intensive skilled work, and progressive technological development. Unfortunately, German VET organizations are still not making full use of digital media. Traditional media formats still dominate in-company initial training, with outdated printed materials and manuals being the most frequently used while cutting-edge techs like virtual classrooms and serious games being the least frequently used. To fully embrace digitalization, German VET must overhaul their approach to education, from infrastructure to curricula to teaching methods, and enhance its application level of digital technologies, in order to keep pace with the ever-evolving demands of the modern workplace and produce highly skilled workers ready to take on the challenges of the digital world.
The German VET system is under pressure to keep up with the fast-paced digital era. In response, Germany has implemented various reform and innovation strategies, including the modernization of training regulations and skeleton curricula. These updates are crucial for providing cutting-edge in-company vocational training and school-based vocational education in the dual system. The modernization of these regulations and curricula involves integrating new work tasks, qualification requirements, digital technologies, equipment, and software into the training goals and teaching methods. This will require not only updating the regulations and curricula but also upgrading teachers’ and trainers’ skills, developing innovative teaching and learning methods using digital media, enhancing digital infrastructures, and promoting greater cooperation between VET organizations and companies. Germany’s VET system is unrelenting in its pursuit of staying ahead of the digital curve and producing highly skilled workers who can thrive in the constantly evolving digital landscape.
The Focuses of the Modernization of Training Regulations and Skeleton Curricula
- Updating the training curricula to include the latest technologies and knowledge. By doing so, we can make the curricula more flexible and adaptable, ensuring that students develop a wide range of skills and competencies that are relevant in the digital age.
- Upgrading the qualifications of our teachers and trainers. They are the backbone of the VET system, and it is critical that they keep pace with the latest trends and technologies. This will enable them to adopt new teaching and training methods and ensure that their students receive a high-quality education.
- Developing innovative teaching and learning methods that incorporate digital media. This will enable students to learn flexibly, independently, personally, and continuously, regardless of time and space constraints. By using digital media to facilitate work-based learning, we can bridge the gap between classroom-based and digital space-based learning.
- Improving digital infrastructures, including networks, digital equipment and tools, resource databases, and digital learning and teaching platforms. By building a solid digital infrastructure, we can support the digital transformation of the VET system and ensure that students have access to the latest technologies and resources.
- Strengthening the cooperation between VET organizations and companies. This means developing sustainable partnerships that go beyond traditional fields like teacher training and qualification development. We need to leverage digital resources and build industry-education networks that promote the sharing of knowledge and resources.
Germany is taking bold steps to make its VET more appealing to young people. One way to achieve this is by using digital tools to provide young people and their parents with better information about VET, such as vocational guidance and career counseling. The Federal Employment Agency and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research are working together to improve young people’s understanding of VET programs, including entry and examination requirements, and the labor market positions and income levels of former trainees. “Perfect match,” a program jointly financed by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action of Germany and the European Social Fund, has already provided career counseling to over 30,000 young people.
Another way Germany is making VET more attractive is by expanding the levels of the German VET system and integrating VET with higher education. The amendment of the 2019 Vocational Education and Training Act sends a clear message about the equivalence of VET and academic education. 3 additional vocational training levels, including certified professional specialist, professional bachelor, and professional master, have been anchored in the Act, providing consistent, discrete qualification titles that demonstrate their equivalence with university degrees. This means that VET pathways are now upped to EQF levels 6 and 7, underlining the equivalence to academic education and providing a new path for individuals to pursue higher education on the VET track.
Meanwhile, Germany is working on ensuring that companies are actively involved in VET programs, and the measures it is implementing are multifaceted and designed to address various issues. The government has a three-pronged approach to addressing various issues. Firstly, it is tackling the shortage of skilled workers by implementing a concerted action plan. Secondly, it is investing heavily in funding in-company training centers to modernize them into competence centers that can produce highly-skilled workers. Lastly, it is helping small- and medium-sized companies cope with the costs of digitalization by launching several projects that provide support and advice. With these measures, Germany is making a significant effort to enhance the participation willingness, and capacity of companies to provide vocational training.
The digital transformation of the world of work is rapidly changing the VET landscape. In response, Germany has implemented a range of strategies to promote VET’s digital transformation. The government has employed educational policies, most notably VET 4.0 Initiative, Vocational School 4.0, and National Skills Strategy; launched special funding programs to enhance the digital infrastructure of VET, improve digital education resources, and support the acquisition of digital media skills by teachers and trainers, in particular, Digital Media in Vocational Training Program and Special Program on Digitalization; and conducted research initiatives, such as the VET 4.0 Initiative, to analyze the characteristics of the digitized working world and provide recommendations for vocational education reform in the digital age. Through these comprehensive strategies, Germany is working towards sustainable development and progress of VET in the digital era, ensuring a bright future for the German workforce.
Strategies Employed to Drive the Digital Transformation of VET
- Supporting VET digital transformation through educational policy.
To assist VET in overcoming new challenges and moving towards “VET 4.0”, the federal and state governments of Germany have issued a series of reform policies, including “Education Initiative for the Digital Knowledge Society” and “Vocational School 4.0 — Further Development of the Innovative Strength and Integration Performance of Vocational Schools in Germany in the Coming Decade,” which depicted the future blueprint for German vocational schools in the digital age. In addition, the first national skills strategy in Germany’s history was launched in 2019 to address the challenges of continuing VET posed in the digital era and establish the reform and innovation framework for continuing VET from ten action fields.
- Supporting the digital media application in German VET through special programs.
Since 2012, the “Digital Media in Vocational Training” program has been funding initial and continuing VET in the use of new digital media, with the last round of funding ending in 2023. The program focused on the improvement of VET’s digital infrastructures, digital education resources, and teachers’ and trainers’ digital media skills. In addition, the Special Program on Digitalization was launched in 2016 to help inter-company training centers modernize their training programs and help SMEs provide up-to-date training, which was expanded to provide new funding possibilities and was extended until the end of 2023. Nearly 40,000 new items had been purchased at more than 200 training centers by the middle of 2020, which has already been used by many inter-company training centers to update their equipment.
- Supporting VET digital transformation through research.
The VET 4.0 Initiative was conducted between 2016 and 2018 to provide policy suggestions and action recommendations for German VET’s digital transformation. This initiative mainly focused on analyzing the characteristics and qualification requirements of the digitized working world, the contents of IT and digital media skills, and the challenges and action recommendations for German VET towards tomorrow. The results provide an important reference for clarifying the direction of vocational education reform and updating training regulations in the digital age.
As the digital transformation continues to sweep across the globe, the German VET system faces a critical juncture. This study has provided a roadmap to address the challenges and strategies for German VET in the digital era. The three dimensions of industrial service capability, adaptability, and attractiveness presented in this study offer a comprehensive approach to navigating the rapidly changing landscape. The federal government of Germany has already taken crucial measures, including modernizing training regulations and expanding development pathways, to ensure that German VET remains competitive and effective.
With the right strategies and tools, we can turn the challenges of the digital revolution into opportunities to produce a highly skilled and adaptable workforce, paving the way for a bright future for our workforce.
Source:
Sustaining the Quality Development of German Vocational Education and Training in the Age of Digitalization: Challenges and Strategies by Chengming Yang, Franz Kaiser, Hui Tang, Pujun Chen, and Junfeng Diao
