Berufkolleg Niederberg – Velbert

As a European school, the Niederberg vocational college looks after around 1,900 students from numerous nations in currently 35 courses.

In addition to the full-time courses for education in the technical and commercial areas, around 50% of our students are trained in the dual system in 14 technical and commercial courses. Due to the large number of globally active training companies, the multicultural composition of our classes and previous experience in exchange programs such as Comenius and Erasmus +, the European diversity in schools and lessons is lived by our 82 colleagues.

Through the European department of the school, the school has also experience in bilingual subject teaching.

Due to the large number of training courses in the commercial sector, both full-time (level 2 – 3) and the dual system (industrial clerks and office management clerks, level 4) and advanced training to become a “state-certified business economist” (level 6)

On the part of the vocational college, specialist knowledge on the subject of entrepreneurship and its components are contributed at the various levels:

• Establishing a company,
• Carrying out market research,
• Searching, selecting and analyzing information,
• Creating SWOT analyzes,
• Creating business plans and
• Benchmarking

About the project idea:

Due to the large number of globally active training companies, there is a great need for the development of international and intercultural skills among the trainees.

But more than that. Entrepreneurship is increasingly an issue for trainees too. Specific knowledge and networks are sought in order to be able to implement these ambitions. We want to advance this development in the KA2 project.

Since 2009, the students at the Niederberg vocational college have had the opportunity to develop their own business ideas in selected courses and to put them into practice in the classroom, taking into account the subject-specific content.
In doing so, the pupils learn about the tasks, duties and responsibilities entrepreneurs have and how to assess the potential of a business idea.

You will also learn how to define the size of the sales market with the help of market research. You will gain expertise in how you assess the competitiveness of a product and what financing options are available for business ideas.

In this context, business skills and profit and loss accounting are also developed and trained. The whole thing is rounded off by the pupils learning techniques of conversation and working on their presentation techniques.

In this regard, the students have the opportunity to learn about various sales techniques. All of this serves the purpose of ensuring that students create a real business plan on the basis of specialist content. Finally, the developed business ideas including the business plan are presented in the form of a competition in front of an expert jury.