BUSINESS FERDINAND AYEN, CEO OF ERNST KLETT PRÄSENZLERNEN OSTEUROPA GMBH – PROVIDER OF KLETT DUAL IN SERBIA PREDRAG KOVAČIĆ, MANUFACTURING ENGINEERING MANAGER AT GRUNDFOS
Dual Education Is A Strong Tool The Klett DUAL programme has two major advantages - it offers a comprehensive package of practical and theoretical knowledge, which is useful for people changing professions and seeking to gain practical knowledge. Another major point is the opportunity to gain a special, specific vocation
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eveloping new educational formats – to combined mid-length vocational courses for individual students with the active mentoring of company partners – is a solution made in Serbia and made for Serbia. That is a way to help cope with the new reality of demand-driven labour markets. • What reflects the significance of dual education and vocational schooling? How important are they for the individual, for students; how important for companies and how important for local communities and society as a whole? Mr Ayen: In Serbia, as well as in many other countries throughout Europe, we face a massive shift from supply-driven to demand-driven labour markets. The reasons are well-known: demography, emigration and a long trend of preferring academic education over vocational education. All these factors constantly 26 |
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reduce the pool of skilled workers. To put it bluntly: head-hunters and HR departments no longer search for managers, rather technicians and hotel clerks. As for the question of the importance of vocational education for companies, communities and society, I would like to respond with a question: who is actually running all that? Who is producing our goods, who is welcoming us to hotels, who is repairing cars and who is capable of maintaining production systems? Society owes much to its workers, and Ernst Klett DUAL knows how to contribute to their qualifications. Mr Kovačić: The ability to change, nowadays, means the difference between success and failure. Education is one of the
major fields to provide the ability to adapt quickly. Dual education is a strong tool for that purpose. It provides individuals with a fast and efficient way to increase their knowledge and become competent with the most important skills nowadays. While learning, students will acquire practical knowledge that’s connected directly to theoretical points. An additional important point to applying changeability is the usage of rare resources. The labour force has become quite a scarce resource in Europe recently. The utilisation of the existing workforce has started to be one of the most important activities for companies that also operate in Serbia. On top of that, scarce resource
