Training assistance: City of Kassel and district work together
The district of Waldeck-Frankenberg and the city of Kassel enter into an inter-communal cooperation with a public-law agreement on the establishment of a joint specialist office for educational support. The object of the cooperation is the promotion of education according to the Federal Education and Training Assistance Act (BAföG) for pupils, interns and students of the Music Academy of the City of Kassel.
"For years, the number of applications for the so-called Schüler-BAföG has been declining nationwide and this trend has been intensified by the Corona pandemic," Mayor Ilona Friedrich and Karl-Friedrich Frese, First District Councillor of the Waldeck-Frankenberg district, announced at a joint press event. The decreasing number of cases presents many authorities with the particular challenge that often only individual employees are able to process applications in a qualified manner and that it is difficult to guarantee substitutes in the event of holidays or illness.
"Our two municipalities are making a virtue out of necessity," Friedrich and Frese say. "Within the framework of the cooperation, the municipal employees will in future also process the applications of people from the Waldeck-Frankenberg district. In this way, we can ensure expertise in the field of training assistance and guarantee all applicants from the city of Kassel and the district of Waldeck-Frankenberg a constant and good processing of their requests," Frese and Friedrich agree. Digitalisation is increasingly opening up opportunities to submit applications digitally or to clarify concerns by phone or email. However, personal counselling sessions are of course also possible in Kassel and once a week in Korbach by prior appointment.
The example of inter-communal cooperation in the area of student BAföG shows that the administrations face up to their responsibility towards the citizens and act with a high demand for quality, but also against the background of resource-saving use of funds. This results in synergy effects for both municipalities and guarantees high-quality counselling and application processing. The Kassel Regional Council as supervisory authority also supports the cooperation and approved it immediately after the decisions of the boards of both municipalities. The district reimburses the city for all costs arising from the fulfilment of the tasks. Information on the topic of training assistance is available at www.kassel.de/ausbildungsfoerderung and on the website of the Waldeck-Frankenberg district .
Background
The number of applications for the pupil BAföG is steadily decreasing both in the district of Waldeck-Frankenberg and in the city of Kassel. For example, while in the city of Kassel there were still 1,152 cases in 2014, the number of cases to be processed initially fell only slightly to 1,086 in 2019. As a result of the Corona pandemic and the accompanying restrictions, fewer and fewer people applied for the Schüler-BAföG, so that the number of applications in the city of Kassel even almost halved in 2022, to 663 cases. In Waldeck Frankenberg, a similar picture emerges: in 2014, the employee was still processing 433 cases, but in 2019 it was only 288. Last year, the number dropped again, to 206.