Schülerfirma (Student-Run Company)

The “Schülerfirma” of Schule am Budenberg gives students the opportunity to get to know the reality of everyday working life in real fields of work with real tasks.

The Schülerfirma “Die Firma” has been a project of the vocational orientation stage at Schule am Budenberg since 2007. Beyond practice-oriented, vocationally focused preparation for career choice, the key aspects are supporting students in line with the important characteristics of training readiness and career-entry maturity.

The main focus here is, alongside getting to know real everyday working life with real customers and real orders, above all promoting performance motivation, developing resilience-building resources in the student, attaining the key qualifications desired by the Federal Employment Agency for vocational integration, and placement in cooperating businesses of the local economy.

Thanks to its successful blend of practical career preparation, competence assessment and resource development, personality training and subject-related lessons within a protected school setting, the project occupies a unique position far beyond regional borders.

Each year, 12-14 students may take part in the project for a maximum of 2 years, and many of them already succeed in moving into employment without having to take “detours” via training providers or other measures.

The target group consists of school leavers of Schule am Budenberg from school years 9 and 10 for whom it is not foreseeable that they will be able to achieve the Hauptschulabschluss (lower secondary school leaving certificate). A capacity limit of max. 15 students in this project is appropriate to the available spatial and staffing conditions.

“Die Firma” is now in its 10th year as an established part of Schule am Budenberg and is closely networked with the diverse local economy and social institutions.

• Development of training readiness and employability
• Identification and evaluation of already acquired basic vocational competences and other personal resources
• Identification and training of competences for coping with everyday life and support in learning a healthy and independent way of life.
• Stabilisation and strengthening of the students’ personalities
• Increase in performance motivation
• Increase in frustration tolerance
• Learning key qualifications and competences for vocational integration
• Development of personal and socio-emotional competences
• Gathering practical experience in the AL (working life) area through work in real working contexts
• Preparation for various areas of post-school life
• Placement in employment

• Sponsorship:

The Schülerfirma is a project of the school, i.e. it is therefore also subject to the insurance conditions of teaching and learning events in the sense of school events.

An association was founded in order to be able to handle the financial transactions.

• The association is funded from the income for the goods produced or service activities, and from occasional donations. The deficit financing through the surrounding municipalities that was originally envisaged became unnecessary, since the volume of orders has long reliably secured the basic financing of the project. The income lies below the assessment threshold, so that the non-profit status of the association is not in question.
• The association bears the costs for renting the workshop hall, all ancillary costs and the costs of additional insurance.
• Profits are paid out proportionally as pocket money to the students; costs for class trips or other events are borne by the association. Material resources, consumables and small devices are likewise purchased by the association.
• Additional costs for the school authority, apart from bus transport (approx. €200 per month), or for the State of Hesse do not arise.

• The Schülerfirma pursues an educational mission in line with the school’s educational mandate:

Through working together, students are taught key qualifications above all such as

independence and the ability to work in a team.

Taking on responsibility has a very special quality in real-life contexts. It promotes and requires reliability, perseverance, confidence in oneself and in others; it practises the ability to handle criticism and conflict, and builds tolerance and acceptance. Through the financial participation of students in the financial “fruits” of the work, the model of the Schülerfirma impressively introduces them to the performance principle.

• The Schülerfirma offers the opportunity for student participation:

The students are jointly responsible for the success of their work. Work allocation, the scope and parts of the organisation of the “company” are subject to student participation. Orders and internship placements are directly linked to successfully completed work. The students learn even more strongly than in a purely school-based learning situation how disadvantageous antisocial behavioural patterns are for the success of plans and processes, and are therefore quickly prepared to formulate their own ideal rules of conduct.

• The Schülerfirma fulfils the educational mandate of the school:

Working in real operational situations in combination with classroom teaching, or in combination with the conveyance of cognitive content, also enables a different approach here. In this way, lesson content can be largely modelled on reality and allow direct connections. The students also gain insight into the real workings of a market economy, which could never be conveyed to this extent within purely school-based contexts.

• Owing to the changed student clientele, with an increasing number of students entitled to special-educational support in the area of emotional and social development, in class groups together with students with physical disabilities, high demands are placed on teachers and on teaching. The aspiration of a broad range of support requires resources and changes with regard to differentiated teaching and everyday school life. The teacher as a learning facilitator is at the forefront here. Particular consideration must be given to the development of teaching towards a competence-based orientation.

• In particular, “school-weary” students who, due to a wide variety of negative experiences and unfavourable categorisations, can hardly associate any more positive aspects or feelings with the “classic” school learning environment, frequently use the chance to rediscover and redefine themselves in the “different” (learning) setting.

Disturbances in social behaviour, which are rooted in structural and systemic conflicts of school as a learning environment, no longer occur, or occur in a weakened form, in the Schülerfirma due to the absence of “triggers”.

• Lessons are aligned with practical work, or take place with a high degree of practical relevance.
• For approximately 14-20 hours per week, the students are taught at the school in the core subjects of Mathematics and German, as well as in study periods and in further project-oriented lessons.
• In addition, approx. 17-21 hours per week of practical, testing and training time are available in the Schülerfirma. The differences arise from the possibility of forming learning groups in the rooms of the Schülerfirma to deepen school content, which can work in parallel with the activities and projects in the company.

• One special-needs teacher to fulfil the teaching duties
• Provision of 2 full-time educator positions
• Support from (volunteer) staff with various professional backgrounds, who are integrated into the everyday life of the Schülerfirma.

• Schule am Budenberg has, in cooperation with the Schülerfirma, decided on the “Hamet” procedure for standardised competence assessment. Decisive factors were, alongside the scientific validity of the results in concrete relation to career-entry maturity, training capability and career choice orientation, the further options provided by the modules “Learning Capacity”, “Social Competences” and “Error Detection”. For this purpose, all materials of “hamet 2” and “hamet e”, the corresponding user training, as well as practical experience in carrying out the procedure are available.

The “hamet 2” procedure is an action-oriented and modularly structured testing procedure for assessing and supporting practical vocational competences and was designed in particular for vocational diagnostics for people with increased need for support, disadvantages and disabilities; however, it is also suitable for other areas of application, such as in vocational schools, vocational training centres or in the training departments of companies. The results of the procedure are intended to help all those involved (students, parents, teachers, potential training companies, the Federal Employment Agency) gain more orientation and transparency in vocational decision-making processes.

Thus, “hamet 2” can be used both to determine employability or existing training requirements, and within the framework of career choice orientation.

“Module 1: Basic Vocational Competences” with its tasks on “basic competences”:

• Routine and pace
• Tool use and control (simple)
• Perception and symmetry
• Comprehension and implementation of instructions
• Tool use and control (complex)
• Measurement accuracy and precision

With “Module 2: Learning Capacity”, statements are to be made about the willingness to learn, the responsiveness to stimuli, and the capacity for learning. The investigation of learning capacity refers to the “basic vocational competences” assessed with Module 1, and thus a prerequisite for the application of Module 2 is the assessment of these competences with Module 1. The aim is to examine the individual learning possibilities with regard to these competences and to develop recommendations for further support.

The third module of “hamet 2” is intended to enable the examination and individual, goal-oriented support of social competences that are required in occupations involving predominantly manual work. For certain characteristics (e.g. teamwork, dealing with customers, dealing with criticism), requirement-relevant group tasks have been developed which are intended to be suitable both for competence assessment and for competence training. This module also names exercises that have an everyday-life relevance. Thus, alongside more work-related tasks such as “assembling a working hammer mechanism according to assembly instructions in the group”, the description also includes tasks related to everyday life such as “shared flat: distribution of rooms and furniture” or “video evening: selection of films, organising the evening”.

In “Module 4 ‘Error Detection and Problem Identification'”, the ability to recognise errors and problems in the workflow and to react to them is examined by means of simulation tasks from various occupational fields.

Hamet e is an action-oriented testing procedure for assessing and supporting elementary manual-motor competences of people with increased need for support, for example in workshops for people with disabilities. As an independent testing procedure, hamet e supplements the procedure hamet 2 Module 1 in differentiating the lower performance range.

Only by adding elements of Module 3 “Social Competences” can a testing of students be offered in grade 7 that allows a comprehensive view of the possibilities, support needs, resources, but also the limits of the young person with regard to their career orientation.

After the testing and evaluation of the grade 7 students, predominantly with tasks from “hamet e”, Module 2 for training the basic competences as well as the further modules for promoting career-entry maturity are offered to the students as elective subject lessons “Hamet”.

Within this framework, further tests for evaluating learning competence and specific tests with a view to the question of suitability for certain occupational fields can be set.

Looking ahead, the goal is to make the methodological competence and experience in applying and using the “hamet testing procedure” available across schools, in cooperation with other (mainstream) schools as well. The standardised competence-assessment procedures partly still established here at the end of secondary level often produce hardly any reliable results with little informative value.

• In the everyday life of the “Schülerfirma”, continuous competence training is carried out using the specially developed “Competence Book” concept. Here, core competences from the areas of life skills, home economics, crafts and career orientation are systematically identified, supplemented and deepened. In addition, there is the IGK competence training, which deals with user and usage practice, as well as the risks of information and communication technology.

In this way, virtually all situations arising in the “everyday company life” can simultaneously be used as problem-solving processes and as tasks for learning and training competences and coping strategies for students. Alongside the prescribed fixed processes for handling orders in organisation, execution and logistics, these are often the small everyday occurrences. Be it that things are missing and need to be purchased, the right tool for a problem is not available, how do we get to a particular place at a particular time, making and maintaining contacts, operating and using machines, aids and equipment, planning quantities, calculating requirements, identifying costs and savings opportunities, etc.

Through the accompanying “Competence Book”, students can quickly recognise which everyday competences they have already been able to acquire from the respective areas, or already had.

• In particular, the class trip of the “Schülerfirma” class, which is financed entirely from the proceeds of the contract work of “Die Firma” and thus remains cost-neutral for ALL students, offers a very interesting space of experience and discovery for the general competence training “life skills” and of course “leisure-time activities”. Already in the planning phase, the students are involved and gain a good impression of what “travelling” costs and how something like this can be organised within their means.

• Thanks to the subject-specific knowledge and experience of the two full-time staff members, two further offerings could be added to the Schülerfirma’s range with the “Bicycle Workshop” and the “Creative Workshop Wood-Paint-Concrete”. Here, things can be tried out, experienced and learned without time pressure or the constraints of external conditions. The focus is on the chain of action “Idea-Sketch-Planning-Organisation-Implementation” on the one hand, and on the process of “Understanding the defect-Finding the solution” on the other.

The company has a specially equipped bicycle workshop. There are three assembly stands, cleaners / greases / oils and special tools for almost all repair and maintenance work on modern bicycles, including hydraulic brake systems, all gear types and suspension systems. A stock of standard wear parts makes it possible to carry out standard repairs spontaneously.

The target group is initially the young people themselves with their own bicycles, the school’s own bicycles, as well as bikes from the families of the young people and from the school’s teaching staff. With the local bicycle shop there is an open, friendly relationship and no competition whatsoever, since the work is offered only to a very small group of people and the target group would not visit a professional workshop for economic reasons.

Alongside the technical skills and knowledge they learn, the young people thus gain and retain new independent mobility, which effectively promotes their self-efficacy. Due to the system of school transport by minibuses, the students do not have student travel passes, which significantly restricts their mobility in their leisure time. We observe that bicycles once regarded as “scrap”, and now usable again, have great significance here.

• The Schülerfirma and the Budenbergschule have an extensive collection of the Fischer-Technik modular construction system. The basis is provided by 20 starter sets designed for use in school, as well as numerous extensions and special construction sets.
• Fischertechnik is excellently suited for learning technical fundamentals, structured working and practising the implementation of written instructions.
• Team tasks, such as the separate construction of a complex structure in small groups with later merging of the modules, promote team development.
• Breaking down the assortment boxes in favour of a “Fischer-Technik storage” sorted by parts promotes the training of the working method typical for industrial constructions, namely working with bills of materials and pick lists.

• In addition to the regular internships in the vocational orientation stage, the “Schülerfirma” class offers the possibility of carrying out individually longer and more frequent internships when a promising constellation arises in cooperation with an employer or in an occupational field.

• A long-term internship at a company or cooperation partner with fixed school days is also possible. Here, the classic 2-to-3-day arrangement proves sensible to keep students anchored further in the school as a learning environment, but to promote the induction and integration of the student into the company, when a successful “matching” makes a later takeover likely.
• The aim is increasingly to expand existing contacts with local companies further. Appropriate coaching for students would be desirable and could, on a more low-threshold level than the Federal Employment Agency can offer, have a positive effect on placement in employment and training. Tailored internships for the students could further contribute to this.

Concept as of September 2017