At the invitation of the Institute for Economic Education (IÖB), more than 100 teachers, company representatives, educational speakers and interested parties exchanged views on cross-border business contacts for pupils at the conference „Practical contacts and vocational orientation in Europe’s neighboring regions“.
Background of the meeting in the NWZ Pressehaus was the three-year EU project IMPULS („Implementation of practice contacts in companies for teachers and students“). In this context, the IÖB has developed and tested a concept with schools in Germany, Poland and the Netherlands, according to which schools close to the border can teach their students in the classroom the economic peculiarities and professional opportunities in the neighboring European country.
„Shortage of skilled labor on the one hand, youth unemployment or lack of professional orientation on the other hand – such problems can not be completely solved by vocational mobility of young people, but reduced“, said Professor Hans Kaminski, Director of the IÖB. In Brandenburg, for example, the tourism and logistics industry is strongly represented, while the IT sector is located in the Polish border region. On the German side, the Michaelschule in Papenburg, the Ennepetal of the Ennepe-Ruhr-Kreis (NRW) and the Ehm Welk Oberschule in Angermünde in Brandenburg, as well as neighboring European countries, had two schools from the Twente region (NL) and two from the Lubusz region (PL).
There was tailwind for European practice contacts, which are mainly provided in the subjects of economics and foreign languages, by Ministerial Councilor Roland Henke, Head of Unit in the Lower Saxony Ministry of Culture. He dealt in a presentation with the school policy framework for cross-border practice contacts. Prof. Dr. Peter J. Weber, Rector of the SRH School of Business and Media Calw, spoke about the advantages of regional multilingualism and interculturality for companies. Meike Richter of the Bünting Unternehmensgruppe showed the importance of German-Dutch training perspectives on the basis of the German-Dutch training project TRABBI.
„Each school has received impulses to create its own concepts for career orientation or to expand its existing cross-border school-economy contacts,“ summarized Sandra Hänke, head of the international department at the IÖB and overall coordinator of the IMPULS project. The aim is to show teachers, students and trainers in companies opportunities for European cooperation.
Read more: https://www.nwzonline.de/wirtschaft/weser-ems/orientierung-im-gewirr-europas_a_15,0,651557629.html
