Schwerin (dpa / mv) – Two out of ten vocational students in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania complete their training without proof of sufficient theoretical knowledge. As the statistical office announced on Friday, at the end of the 2021/22 school year, 9,239 of the 11,243 graduates of the vocational schools received a certificate of completion. Around 2000 only received a leaving certificate because of poor performance. According to the IHK in Schwerin, however, such trainees can also be admitted to the skilled worker examinations after individual examinations.
The reason for the lack of skilled workers, which companies are increasingly complaining about, is not primarily the fact that for years one fifth of apprentices have not reached their school training target. As the statistics also show, the number of vocational school graduates in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania has halved since 2007. Up until then, around 24,000 young people had completed an apprenticeship each year.
Companies, especially in the healthcare and catering sectors, are increasingly relying on young professionals from abroad, but they are far from able to close the gaps. According to statistics, 845 foreign young professionals completed their training this summer. This means that their number has increased more than tenfold within ten years. The proportion of graduates rose to 7.5 percent.
At almost 76 percent, the success rate in school training was hardly worse than that of the German trainees, which was 83 percent. At the beginning of the 1990s, 90 percent of the apprentices had passed the vocational school exams.