Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB)

BIBB was founded in 1970 and is supervised on points of law concerning its administrative activities by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). It is seated in Bonn. Its present statutory basis is the Vocational Training Act (Berufsbildungsgesetz) of 23 March 2005 which outlines the Institute's duties.

BIBB's work

The Institute's mandated tasks include conducting research on vocational education and training, developing vocational education and training, serving in an advisory capacity and providing services. The research activies have to be coordinated with BMBF.

The findings from BIBB's work and research are primarily directed at

• persons and bodies involved in planning vocational training. These include federal and state-level ministries, central employers' organisations, unions, trade associations and the offices responsible for vocational training (i.e., chambers), 
• persons who will implement vocational training, in particular management, personnel officers, personnel committees, works councils, instructors in companies and vocational training facilities and vocational school teachers, 
• the research community consisting of, for example, universities, tertiary education institutions and other vocational training research institutesThe work done by the Institute currently revolves around five focal areas:

Other tasks of BIBB amongst other are - on orders from the BMBF - the cooperation in the development of training regulations and other regulations based on the Vocational Training Act, assessment and control tasks in distance learning, support in statistics and the Report on Vocational Education and Training. BIBB research activities center around the training place market and the employment system; updating vocational training and improving the quality of vocational training; life-long learning, the permeability and equivalence of training paths; vocational training for specific target groups; the internationality of vocational training.