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58 TRANSITIONS, INTERLOCKING AND PERMEABILITY OF EDUCATIONAL DOMAINS
Dachau Skills Agency (Bavaria)
Step Out – Skills 2007
I. Problem
When they leave school, young people enter into a new
phase in their lives, one which is marked by the first decisions
they take on their own account, decisions whose longterm
effects are often impossible to judge. They leave the
ordered life of school more or less well equipped to take
these decisions, which will have a major influence on their
future lives. However a lack of experience, inadequate
insight into the relevant facts and a personality maturation
process which is only just beginning often leave these young
people with a sense of insecurity in this situation.
II. Solution approach
This insecurity on the part of the young people can be countered
with appropriate measures. The Dachau Skills Agency
has developed an in-school educational service known as
“Step Out – Skills 2007” (in the original: “Step Out – Kompetenz
2007”). It is a long-term programme specially developed
for students at Dachau’s middle and high schools and
is designed to help promote the personalities of future
school leavers, as well as to develop the skills which will be
needed as they “step out” into life.
The project is designed for a duration of four years. In
these four years, it will pass through several phases, in
which, in an eight-month rhythm, students first from
Dachau’s high schools (Gymnasien) and then from the city’s
middle schools (Realschulen) will be supervised. In the case
of the high-school students, we are dealing with those in
year 11, while the middle-school students are in year 9. They
enrol in the scheme voluntarily, but once enrolled, undertake
to take part in the programme for the whole of the
eight-month period.
This educational service starts with a nine-day pedagogical
experience course with a large self-experience component.
It is concerned with self-awareness, evolving a consciousness
of the realities of one’s own life, the building up
of self-confidence and team skills, and developing an
awareness of one’s own and others’ opinions. The nine-day
block is followed by five weekend events, which include
such topics as career orientation and training, youth participation,
presentation techniques, drama and elocution and
the like.
Over and beyond the weekend blocks, the young people
have the additional task of setting up a regional project and
of presenting this to the public. The current project is the
establishment of a self-managed young people’s café in
Dachau. The participants acquire the necessary skills and
contacts for the project in a one-to-two-week work-experience
period at companies in the region. The contacts they
thus make with business and the jobs market secure and
improve the potential of high-performing youngsters in
the region. This close liaison between education and business
in the Dachau region (work-experience schemes, and
the development of a lasting network with its own dynamic)
will, it is hoped, stimulate the young people to perhaps
take up employment in the town or rural district of Dachau
III. Outlook
By promoting employability, we hope to ease the young
people’s transition to the world of work.
www.kaddachau.de