Future for young talents: BÜA will become a regular offer in Hesse!

Future for young talents: BÜA will become a regular offer in Hesse!

There is a happy atmosphere at the Herwig Blankertz School in Hofgeismar. On the occasion of the graduation ceremony of the vocational school for the transition to training (BÜA), Minister of Education Armin Schwarz visited the school and brought exciting news with him. The BÜA, which has been running as a school experiment for several years, will in the future take a permanent place in the education system in Hesse. Schwarz announced that the BÜA would be made permanent in Hesse and that around 80 of 104 vocational schools should introduce the BÜA as a regular offer. The goal: to pave the way to a professional future for young people like recent graduates.

“It is important that our schools adapt to the constantly changing demands of the labor market,” emphasized Schwarz. In recent years, the number of training contracts in Hesse has fallen drastically, especially during the Corona pandemic, when it fell to fewer than 90,000. The number is now back to around 92,000. The BÜA offers valuable support for students who do not have a secondary school diploma, cannot find a training place or have special needs.

The structure of the BÜA

The BÜA is divided into two levels and includes not only general education subjects such as German, mathematics, English and sports, but also vocational lessons. This gives students insights into at least two professional areas, particularly office management and retail. Lessons are taught for 30 hours per week in small learning groups of a maximum of 16 students. In addition, internships are an essential part of watching students pursue their careers and improving their chances of successful training.

The BÜA teachers attach great importance to small class sizes. Teacher Sabine Posselt expressed the wish for the final exam to be even more closely linked to practice in order to offer students the best possible preparation for the professional world. Headmaster Rainer Büchter hopes that the positive experiences from Hofgeismar will be taken into account in future legislation on the BÜA.

Challenges and opportunities of the transition system

The BÜA is part of a multi-layered transition system that aims to help young people improve their career prospects. According to the Federal Agency for Civic Education, the transition system includes heterogeneous educational programs and is aimed specifically at teenagers and young adults without training or with the need to acquire a general school leaving certificate. Training measures in this system can last up to a year and represent a valuable bridge into the professional world. What is particularly important is that the quality of the internships is crucial for a successful transition, not necessarily the duration.

In Hesse, where the BÜA is now subject to legal regulation, the demand for such transitional measures is expected to increase. It is all the more important that educational institutions are well positioned to overcome these challenges and offer every student the best possible opportunities.

Looking to the future, the BÜA plays a key role in giving young people a perspective and accompanying them on their way to a successful professional career. This is a development that will be well received not only in Hofgeismar, but throughout Hesse.

For further details about the BÜA, please visit the HNA's reporting on the visit of Minister of Education Schwarz here, you can find out more about the structure of the BÜA on the Offenbach Schools website here, and receive valuable information about the transition system from the Federal Agency for Civic Education here.