Examination task and teaching material development center

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The examination task and teaching material development center of the IHK Region Stuttgart (PAL) was founded in 1948 as the central task creation facility of the Chambers of Industry and Commerce (IHKs) for the development of commercial-technical examination tasks . All 80 IHKs in Germany and an increasing number of HWKs are now PAL customers.

Examination tasks in the commercial technical area

As the central task preparation facility of the IHKs, the PAL covers a wide range of current commercial and technical professions. It delivers written, practical and integrated intermediate and final exams four times a year for currently 141 professions, disciplines and areas of activity .

  • Intermediate exams in 43 professions, disciplines, areas of application
  • Final exams in 88 professions, disciplines, areas of application
  • Final exams part 1 in 30 professions, fields, areas of application
  • Final exams part 2 in 53 professions, fields of study, areas of application

The exam tasks

Figure 1: Percentage distribution of the task sets delivered to the individual professional groups (as of 2014)

The examination tasks are developed by 872 voluntary PAL specialist committee members in 134 specialist committees and working groups with the help of over 50 full-time PAL employees. Figure 1 shows the occupational groups in which exam questions are currently offered.

Examination modalities and characteristics of the examinations

Most of the PAL exams are carried out nationwide at the same time and with the same content. A feature of the PAL exams is that not only theoretical knowledge, but also practical application is tested. Due to changing training content, the PAL tasks are checked at regular intervals to ensure that they are up to date and tasks are deleted or added to.

The task creation

Technical committees

The technical committees are responsible for drafting, reviewing, testing and approving the examination assignments.

Equal composition

The technical committees usually consist of nine members and are composed equally of representatives from employers and employees as well as teachers from vocational schools . The prerequisite for the appointment as a member of a PAL technical committee is the expertise in the examination area and the appointment as an examiner in a regional technical committee.

Procedure and development of new tests

The development, review and selection of examination questions is a complex process that takes around two years. Every year the PAL technical committees develop new tasks for the intermediate and final exams: The technical committees can fall back on a large pool of existing tasks which is constantly updated and expanded.

Task development stages

The PAL examination task sets are developed by the PAL technical committees in a six-stage process:

  1. Stage: The members of the technical committees are given the task of developing new examination tasks.
  2. Stage: The tasks developed are discussed in the technical committee and - if they meet the requirements - are provisionally approved.
  3. Stage: The approved draft tasks are brought into a form that conforms to the test and standards by the responsible PAL project managers and the PAL CAD team.
  4. Stage: The members of the technical committee receive the documents for control, pre-test, replica and comment.
  5. Stage: Based on the statements of the specialist committee members, PAL prepares the documents for the next specialist committee meeting.
  6. Stage: In the next technical committee meeting, the final adoption of the task sets takes place.

The bodies of the PAL

The main committee

The main committee is made up of employee and Chamber of Commerce representatives. He decides on fundamental issues, speaks, etc. a. Recommendations for the interpretation of training regulations and for the development of examination tasks from and discussed questions raised by the PAL technical committees.

The Technical Committee

The Technical Committee is made up of IHK representatives from all federal states and deals with content-related, technical and organizational issues relating to the examinations and how they are conducted.

The advisory board

The advisory board consists of IHK representatives from the education sector from all federal states. It helps to make the work of PAL more transparent for the IHKs.

Similar facilities

The examination tasks for commercial and commercially related apprenticeships are provided by the task center for final and intermediate commercial examinations (AkA) and the Central Office for Examination Tasks North-West (ZPA North-West). The central technical committee for vocational training in print and media (ZFA print media) creates tasks for the graphic industry .

Web links

literature

  • PAL examination tasks and teaching material development center of the Stuttgart Region Chamber of Commerce (ed.): Annual report 2014 . March 2015.
  • IHK Region Stuttgart PAL (publisher): QM handout for test task creators 1st edition 2010. Dr.-Ing. Paul Christiani GmbH & Co. KG, Constance, September 2009, ISBN 978-3-86522-570-2 .