Use advanced search functions, such as * as a placeholder for parts of words (e.g. refugee can be found by typing ref *) or enter several search terms, such as qualification refugee.
The 2019 Global Education Monitoring Report by UNESCO congratulates Germany for its policies in recognizing migrants and refugees’ prior qualifications and skills. The recognition of foreign professional qualifications increases the probability of immigrant employment by 45 percentage points and the hourly wage by 40%. A million migrants a year visit the website ‘Recognition in Germany’, which offers advice on the recognition procedure in 9 languages. The information on foreign vocational training systems and professional qualifications in the BQ-Portal is accessed annually by over 180,000 website visitors, primarily assessment authorities, companies and experts.
More and more people worldwide learn German. This positive trend becomes especially apparent in China (117,000 learners), in India (154,000 learners) and in Brazil (134,000 learners). Thereby, the number of German learners in China has even more than doubled within a period of five years.
On 11 January 2013, policy makers and representatives from chambers of commerce, companies, public authorities and migrants’ associations came together for a conference entitled “Skilled workers – Transparency – Respect: tapping the domestic pool of skills” at the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi) in Berlin. The participants discussed new approaches to assessing and recognising foreign qualifications and exchanged their experiences.
The report was adopted by the Federal Government on 11 December 2019 and subsequently submitted to the German Bundestag. The complete report is now also available in an English version and can be downloaded as a PDF document or ordered as a printed version.
The first day of the European Validation Festival - Unlocking talents in Europe, on 14 June in Brussels, featured a marketplace with 40 stands where organisations had the opportunity to present their initiatives and practices on validation of informal and non-formal learning. The experts from all around Europe shared practices and exchanged ideas and knowledge about how the work experience of job applicants who move from one country to another can be recorded faster and more transparently. The participants agreed that there is a lot to learn from each other. After all, there are many initiatives and best practice projects in Europe dedicated to this topic.
From 1 July onwards, skilled workers from non-EU countries will find it easier to relocate to Germany. On that date, the new Employment Act will come into effect, which is aimed at counteracting the current shortage of skilled workers and enhancing Germany’s position in the worldwide competition for qualified professionals. Not an easy task, as other large Western economies and newly industrialised countries are also adapting their immigration policies.
The new Employment Ordinance has been in force since 1 July. The list of occupations in which people with vocational training qualifications from non-EU countries can access the German labour market is now also in place. Following the "EU Blue Card" for the highly skilled, the improved recognition of foreign vocational qualifications and the relaxations in the rules for students from non-EU countries who wish to stay on to work in Germany, this is a further important step towards making it easier for workers from outside the EU to enter the German labour market and towards covering the skills gap in the German economy via migration.