The corona pandemic shows: everyday life and routines have to be rethought, private life and work have to be restructured. A good time for workers to remember their right to educational leave.
It is a time of reorientation. Corona puts life to the test and questions your own wishes and needs: What is important to me? What are my priorities? Am I happy with my job? How do I shape my future? In the search for answers, a change of perspective in the form of educational leave can help.
In Germany, employees have the right to five to ten days of additional leave per year for seminars that are recognized as educational leave. In 14 federal states – apart from Saxony and Bavaria – there is a right to educational leave.
An important condition: The employee bears the costs for the course. In return, the employer continues to pay the salary during the educational leave. A professional reference does not have to be given for educational leave.
“Educational leave in Germany could be used by around 27 million employees – but it is estimated that only around a third of them know their right to further training,” says Lara Körber from the Berlin start-up Bildungsurlauber.de. “However, educational leave is becoming increasingly popular. After discussions with many ministries, we have calculated that the usage rate is increasing nationwide by around ten percent annually. And that’s no wonder because people are slowly saying that educational leave is much more than the Excel spreadsheet or the IT course. “
Diversity of topics
Educational leave can be management training or marketing training, but also a language course, yoga, paragliding, or fasting hiking in Brandenburg.
Körber explains: “In addition to professional training, personal development is also explicitly in the foreground during the educational leave. On our booking platform, many seminars in the field of health are also requested, which deal with back training, stress management, and burnout prevention. Incidentally, these are often subsidized by the health insurance company. “
Who will benefit from Bildungsurlaub?
Those who take educational leave and invest in further training create new personal and professional opportunities. “It’s not just about acquiring skills or new areas of knowledge, but also about meeting and reflecting on exchanges with others,” states Matthias Alke, Professor at the Institute for Adult Education at the Humboldt University (HU) in Berlin. This is particularly important in crisis situations in order to develop a way of dealing with things and developing new perspectives. “The statutory right to educational leave in many federal states creates an important framework here,” said Alke.
Educational leave is a matter for the federal states, so each federal state has its own regulations. Employed civil servants or trainees are generally entitled to paid special leave for their further training. If you want to be clear about your entitlement to educational leave in 30 seconds, the Bildungsurlaub check can help.
What is different in the corona pandemic
The right to educational leave is also guaranteed by law during the corona pandemic – and is also possible in many federal states. “The seminars take place in accordance with distance and hygiene rules, which have been approved by the health department and serve to protect participants, course leaders, and employees from pandemics,” says Ditte Gurack, program area manager for work and careers at the VHS Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg in Berlin, about your own educational leave offer.
In principle, approval from the employer is required to participate in a course. He can only reject the application for compelling operational reasons. In most cases, however, managers are open to their employees’ educational leave. Because they not only benefit professionally from the further training of their employees: “If companies are open to educational leave and support the interest in further training, this also promotes the loyalty of the employees to the company,” says HU Professor Alke.
