What shall I do after leaving school? This is a question many pupils in Thuringia ask themselves each year. For their search for an adequate dream job to be successful, it is necessary to inform the pupils well ahead in time and comprehensively as to the occupational perspectives and development possibilities available in the region. Since 2003, this is the objective of the Free State's "BERUFSSTART plus" project.
Since August 2011, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) supports the Thuringian occupational orientation project "BERUFSSTART plus". Under the terms of the agreement, the federal ministry provides about five million Euro from its federal state resources for occupational and study orientation for this Thuringian project for the period up until 2014.
The project's objective is to provide pupils with occupational orientation support that is founded in practice and is relevant to the labour market, so as to prepare them for a successful transition into an apprenticeship.
Each year, more than 17,000 pupils from approximately 140 regular schools in the Free State are coached from seventh grade onwards until their entering into an apprenticeship or moving on to a secondary school. The programme includes, among other things, work placements of several weeks with enterprises from the region.
During the presentation of the agreement documents at the BTZ-Rohr-Kloster, Dr Helge Braun, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research indicated with respect to the significance of economy-related occupational orientation and this funding that the success of such an early and practical occupational orientation could be measured at the workbench. "We can observe that after this preparation the young people attend school with greater motivation, have an improved notion of their choices of occupation yet understand also the demands facing them in the working world.
The most important thing is, however, the discovery of their own talents during the orientation period. I am delighted that, as the first federal state, Thuringia has adopted responsibility for a form of occupational orientation for all regular pupils, that is firmly rooted in everyday life at school", Braun continued.
For many years now, the Free State of Thuringia with the ESF funds it is allocated and the Employment Agencies support the joint efforts on part of the three chambers of crafts and the three chambers of industry and commerce to provide business-related and continuous occupational orientation for Thuringian pupils.