Future perspective: annual professional qualification (Hamburg Model)

“up to 15 % of school leavers cannot begin professional education,
they have to stay in long queues or do not obtain professional education and quickly end in unemployment”

Main objectives

With SMEs implementation of the Hamburg Model for the integration of young people with special educational needs in the vocational training.

Transfer of the German system of dual vocational training and support of implementation.

Transfer of all the results in all the Baltic Sea countries and securing high sustainability.

Summary of the Project

In separate countries up to 15 % of school leavers cannot begin professional education, they have to stay in long queues or do not obtain professional education and quickly end in unemployment. Up to 30 % of young people which begin vocational training abandon it completely or change the profession. The professional education has significantly lost its attractiveness. Especially in the new EU countries (e.g. Poland, Lithuania, Latvia) with predominantly school vocational training the participation has decreased to a terrifying low level.

SMEs complain about lack of qualifications by school vocational training and about the increasing lack of specialists. At the same time one can notice a very high rate of unemployment among young people especially in the countries with school vocational training.

The implementation and the strengthening of dual vocational training make a crucial contribution to the solution of the problem. In Hamburg within the dual system the model of a one-year professional qualification for young people with special educational needs was developed and successfully implemented; this model integrates young people better, makes the choice of the profession more certain, decreases drop-out rates and very clearly increases the chances at the labour market. The one-year professional qualification can be acknowledged as the first year of training and the training in the regular dual system can be continued.

After the further development and adaptation to country-specific conditions the Hamburg Model is transferred in three countries with predominantly school vocational training and implemented in Vilnius, Lodz and Budapest. In connection therewith the system and experiences of the German dual vocational training should be transferred and general initiations should be supported. In order to promote further implementations of the Hamburg Model and introduction of the dual system, to achieve high sustainability and broad effect, a network is established in the whole Baltic Sea Region with 15 universities and 50 Chambers as permanent developers, promoters and consultants.

The Lead Partner is the Hanseatic Parliament which promotes professional qualifications in the Baltic Sea Region and incorporates 50 Chambers as associated partners. The institute which has developed the Hamburg Model is the Baltic Sea Academy which incorporates 15 universities as well as Chambers and vocational schools from Lithuania, Poland and Hungary which are represented in the consortium. Two further partners from Norway and Latvia introduce their experiences and control implementations in their countries.

Partners