“Reducing School Dropouts: A Central Task for the Future of Skilled Workers”

The school year is entering the home stretch. Most of the tenth grade boys and girls will graduate successfully, but many will go home without a degree. This means a mortgage for your future working life. Every missed degree is a missed opportunity. And with every unskilled person, the shortage of skilled workers worsens.

The number of school dropouts must be reduced. This is a central task for teachers, parents, politicians and the young people themselves. In the past five years alone, 10,000 girls and boys have failed to graduate. The education system must also support young people with poor starting opportunities in such a way that they achieve a formal qualification.

We also need more quality when changing into the professional world. For young people with no or bad qualifications, there is an almost confusing system of courses and educational measures in Berlin. They often delay the path to an apprenticeship, as a new report by the renowned research institute for company training shows. Our suggestion: the dozens of measures should be reduced to just a few effective ones. Only things that get young people into in-company training as quickly as possible can be continued. Hamburg has done very well with this principle in recent years.

As a business association, we want to show how it can be done with a model project. From May, together with our project partner Joblinge, we will be taking 140 young people with learning difficulties by the hand. In the final school year, we help them choose a career and organize internships. After the start of training in the company, we stay by your side so that you become real specialists. We want everyone to have a chance for the future.