Educational standards in vocational education and skills-orientated teaching

Vocational educational standards focus on leaving qualifications and make an important contribution to transparent representation of skills to be acquired. They highlight the skills and competences that a school leaver should have at their disposal long term when they have completed the school for intermediate vocational education or college for higher vocational education. Educational standards therefore describe core academic and vocational skills, as well as core social and personal competences. They always consist of a competence model for the respective teaching subject/subject area (composed of action and content dimensions), descriptors (points at which action and content dimensions intersect) and model lessons, which specify the descriptors and can be used in lessons.

The educational standards have diverse functions – they are used primarily to assure school system quality. They place the focus on the skills to be acquired by pupils and flesh out the curricula in selected core areas. Both the educational standards and curricula form an essential basis for skills-orientated lesson planning and implementation. The educational standards provide teaching staff with tools which help them to tailor their teaching more closely to (vocational) skills and real-life learning situations.

The Educational standards website on the vocational schools Internet portal provides further information on the subject of “Educational standards in vocational education” and “Skills-orientated teaching” (in German only). This website also contains a graphic of the individual educational standards and the concomitant model lessons.