“Everything revolves around the trainees!”

Cooperation between the part-time vocational school and the workplace as learning venues is the vital prerequisite for the success of a dual-system initial vocational training programme. Although the German Vocational Training Act expressly provides for cooperation between these learning venues, in practice it frequently remains unclear how cooperation can be organised in reality. The following interview with Frank Barth, a teacher at the August Horch School in Andernach, and Reiner Hürter, a trainer at Westnetz GmbH, shows what opportunities such cooperation potentially offers. At the same time, the lessons learned over a twenty-year track record of cooperation make it clear how many basics must be in place to support collaboration as an everyday practice, if the aim is to bring together the school-based and workplace-based viewpoints into an integrated vision of the trainee.