The Bad Reputation of External Retraining Programs
"Are Your Instructors Actually Sober?"
There are questions you don't expect from advisors at the employment agency. You expect questions about educational background, about professional field, about personal goals. But this question "Are your instructors actually sober?" has by now become part of the standard repertoire of some job placement officers when participants in a retraining program want to switch providers and ask for support.
The fact that this question is asked at all, and that the answer genuinely determines whether someone stays or goes, says more about the state of this education sector than any statistic could.
And yet, external retraining is actually one of the most important socio-political measures our education system has to offer. It gives people a second chance. People who, due to illness, job cuts, technological change, or simply a wrong career choice, find themselves having to start over in the middle of their lives. Two to three years, funded by the Federal Employment Agency or the German Pension Insurance, with the goal of obtaining a full vocational qualification and returning permanently to the labor market.
This is an expensive, complex, and fundamentally sound instrument. So why does it have the reputation of being a waiting room for those who have failed?
The Reality in Many Classrooms
The answer does not begin with malicious intent. It begins with a structural indifference toward what actually happens in the classroom.
If you start a retraining program today, you may, if you're lucky, end up with a provider that offers genuine instruction: instructors who come prepared, who explain content, who respond to questions, who think didactically. If you're unlucky, you end up with a provider where "instruction" means: at the start of the week, a collection of PDFs is uploaded to the classroom or the digital learning portal. The instructor briefly appears, explains that the content is "basically self-explanatory," and is then virtually unreachable for the next two weeks. No explanations, no discussion, no feedback. The participants sit alone with material designed for self-directed continuing education by people with solid prior knowledge, not for people learning a new profession from scratch.
This is not an isolated incident. It is a widespread practice that has established itself over years because nobody seriously looks.
Compounding this is the fact that retrainees find themselves in a particularly vulnerable situation. They are often in their mid-thirties, mid-forties. Many have families, ongoing expenses, little financial leeway. They have made a conscious decision to start over again, and they carry the psychological weight of that decision with them every day. When instruction then fails to materialize, when nobody explains anything, when questions are left unanswered, it doesn't just break learning motivation, it also breaks self-image. "Maybe I'm just no longer capable of learning." This thought is not uncommon, and in most cases it is simply wrong, it is the product of poor didactics.
Consistency as an Exception, Not the Standard
What we know from our daily work, and what is confirmed again and again by participant accounts: consistent, reliable instruction is not a given in the retraining landscape, it is a unique selling point.
That should give everyone pause.
Consistency here does not mean that ten hours of frontal instruction must take place every day. It means that participants know when they can expect support. That content is introduced in a structured way before it is deepened. That questions do not echo into a vacuum but are answered, ideally promptly. That feedback on learning progress is provided. That instructors are present, both figuratively and literally.
All of this sounds self-evident. And in a regular school, in a vocational school, in a degree program, it would be. But in external retraining, one has grown accustomed to lowering the bar.
The result: participants who transfer to us describe, almost without exception, that they feel the difference immediately. Not as a pleasant surprise, but as an unsettling normality. "I had completely stopped expecting anyone to explain things." That is not a compliment to us. It is an assessment of a broken system.
The Desire to Switch and Its Bureaucratic Hurdles
When participants realize that their provider is not giving them what they need, the obvious thought is: switch. And here begins the next layer of frustration.
Switching providers during a retraining program is possible, but complicated. It requires the consent of the funding body, i.e., the employment agency or pension insurance. It requires recognition of already completed coursework by the receiving provider. It requires coordination, documentation, patience.
And it requires that the advising person at the authority actually recognizes the switch as legitimate. In practice, participants encounter a remarkable reaction: skepticism. "Have you tried everything yourself?" "Might part of the problem actually lie with you?" The question about the instructors' sobriety is in this context not irony, but bitter seriousness. It illustrates that the threshold for a recognized reason to switch is set just as low as the expectations of the providers themselves: as long as someone is physically standing at the front and instruction is formally taking place, the measure is deemed proper.
This has direct consequences for those affected. Many remain in situations that are harming their learning progress, because the way out is too arduous or because they are not sure whether another provider would actually be better.
The Internship: Where Poor Training Becomes Visible
The consequences of inadequate training become particularly apparent at a point that is mandatory for all external retraining programs: the internship. Depending on the chamber district, retrainees must work practically in a company for between six and nine months. This internship is not an optional add-on, it is a central component of the training and relevant to the final examination.
For participants, this means they must find an internship placement themselves. And here, poor preparation meets hard market conditions.
Companies that take on interns from retraining programs do not do so out of altruism. They invest time in onboarding, they take on responsibility for the quality of the training, they are in effect evaluating potential employees over several months. They select. And they have learned to differentiate.
An applicant who cannot explain basic technical terms in the job interview, who becomes uncertain with practical scenarios, who reveals that their theoretical foundation is full of gaps, that applicant has poor prospects. Not because they are incapable of learning, but because their provider failed to prepare them adequately.
This is the direct path by which institutional failure materializes into individual fate. Poor instruction at the provider leads to poor preparation, poor preparation leads to worse chances in the internship market, worse chances in the internship market impede the completion of the qualification and thereby the return to the profession. The person who deserved a chance is disadvantaged by the shortcomings of an institution over which they had no influence.
That is not fair. And it is avoidable.
Anyone in Germany wishing to offer retraining programs funded by the Federal Employment Agency or the German Pension Insurance requires AZAV certification. AZAV stands for "Anerkennungs- und Zulassungsverordnung Weiterbildung" (Recognition and Admission Regulation for Continuing Education), and the certificate is issued by accredited specialist bodies that regularly check whether a training provider meets the relevant requirements.
This sounds like solid quality assurance. But it is a profound confusion of form and substance.
What AZAV certification actually evaluates is primarily the quality of the documentation. Is there a quality management system? Are curricula recorded in writing? Are instructors formally qualified? Are there complaint procedures on paper? Are measures correctly documented?
What it does not evaluate is what actually happens in the classroom. Whether instructors show up and engage substantively with the content. Whether participants actually learn anything. Whether the pace is right. Whether individual difficulties are addressed. Whether the teaching concept holds up didactically.
A provider whose instructors upload a PDF for two weeks and then disappear can be AZAV-certified without any problem. It can be, as long as it submits curricula, retains qualification records of its instructors, and fulfills the administrative requirements. The question of whether these instructors actually conduct instruction is not systematically reviewed as part of the certification process.
This is the central problem: AZAV creates an illusion of quality control without delivering actual quality control. The certification is an access ticket for public funding, not a seal of approval for educational quality. And because it is perceived as a seal of approval, including by authorities, including by participants who do not know what lies behind it, it creates a false sense of security.
Why the System Works the Way It Works
One need not attribute fundamental malice to providers that do poor work. Many of them operate in an environment that does not punish poor quality and does not reward good quality.
Remuneration by the Federal Employment Agency is essentially calculated per participant-day. As long as participants are present, funds flow. As long as the AZAV documentation is in order, there are no complaints. As long as nobody lodges complaints or submits transfer requests that are actually processed seriously by the authority, a provider has no economic incentive whatsoever to invest in instructional quality.
Good instructors cost more than poor ones. Structured, consistent instruction requires more preparation time than an uploaded PDF. Didactic concepts, individual support, regular feedback: all of this costs money, without it showing up in the metrics by which the system is evaluated.
In such an environment, it is no surprise that some providers choose the path of least effort. The surprise is that some do it better anyway.
The Comparison That Raises Questions: The Aufstiegs-BAföG
To understand how different things could be, it is worth looking at another funding instrument: the Aufstiegs-BAföG.
The Aufstiegs-BAföG, formerly known as Meister-BAföG, is a state grant for people who want to advance their professional qualifications. It targets skilled workers seeking a master craftsman's certificate, a specialist business administrator qualification, a technician's diploma, or similar credentials. The funding comprises grants and low-interest loans for course fees and living expenses.
The distinctive feature of the Aufstiegs-BAföG is a seemingly small but significant condition: those who receive funding automatically commit to active participation in instruction. Regular attendance is a prerequisite for funding. Absences can lead to a reduction or loss of funding. Those who fail to sit the examination or drop out may, under certain circumstances, be required to repay funds.
This creates a dual structure of responsibility: the participant is required to take the funding seriously. And from this, an implicit expectation arises toward the educational institution to provide instruction that deserves and enables this earnest participation.
One need not celebrate this regulation uncritically. But it poses an important question: why do comparable mechanisms not exist for external retraining programs?
The Missing Attendance and Performance Accountability in Retraining
External retraining programs, funded by the employment agency or pension insurance, have no consistently enforced attendance obligation with real consequences for funding comparable to the Aufstiegs-BAföG. There are formal attendance regulations, but in practice these have little bite.
This leads to a twofold problem.
On one side, there are participants who do not take the measure seriously, because they know the consequences are manageable. They are a minority, but one that shapes the reputation of retraining classes and makes companies skeptical.
On the other side, and this is the more serious problem, there are providers who know that nobody really checks whether their instruction is good. The combination of absent quality control for providers and absent binding participation obligations for participants creates an environment in which indifference at every level is possible.
This is not coincidental. It is the result of legislative frameworks that were never consistently thought through to their conclusion.
Naming Responsibility Clearly
It would be easy to now point the finger at individual providers. Yes, there are poor providers. Yes, there are instructors who are not equal to their task or do not take it seriously. Yes, there are institutions that collect public funding without delivering genuine value in return.
But anyone looking at the system as it is must seek responsibility where the rules are set: with legislators and authorities.
The AZAV regulation was not designed by providers. It was passed by political actors who decided that documentation quality is sufficient as a proxy for educational quality. That decision was wrong, and it has been refuted by reality for years.
The remuneration structure for training providers that does not reward quality was not invented by providers. It is the result of procurement logic that seeks to minimize costs while systematically undervaluing the importance of educational quality.
The absence of a binding participation obligation with real consequences, comparable to the Aufstiegs-BAföG, is not a force of nature. It is a political omission.
Anyone who understands funded retraining programs as a socially valuable instrument, which they are, must also be prepared to create the structures that protect this instrument. That means quality controls that genuinely examine what happens in the classroom, not just whether the files are in order. That means remuneration models that incentivize quality rather than merely billing attendance. That means participation obligations that reflect the value of the funding and simultaneously generate expectations of providers.
What Is at Stake
The people who enter external retraining programs are not abstract funding statistics. They are people in real transitional situations who deserve a genuine chance, not a bureaucratically correctly documented simulation of a chance.
When a retrainee completes two years with a weak qualification and without adequate internship preparation and then enters a market that knows full well that retraining qualifications are a quality lottery, it is not just that one individual who fails. The promise that society made to them fails.
We can and want to improve our own work, consistently and daily. But we cannot repair the broken foundation on which the entire sector stands, alone. That is a political task. And it is long overdue.
The question of whether the instructors are sober should be the lowest of all bars. The fact that in reality it counts as a sufficient quality indicator says everything.