Educational leave is often used by people with an already high level of education and is increasingly being taken up by women on parental leave. The time and content requirements for training and further education are low and can be used for publicly funded time-outs, according to the RH on Friday. And a new business model has developed around educational leave.
Since 2017, educational leave has increasingly been linked to parental leave. “There were more course providers on the market who, under the slogan ‘Baby-Pause-Verlängern’, tailored their business model specifically to courses, especially online courses, which could be attended with little effort in addition to childcare. They were explicitly with the financial support of the Public Employment Service (AMS) from public funds for educational leave,” said the inspectors from the RH.
The number of people who went on educational leave immediately after parental leave has increased tenfold within four years. 99 percent of those receiving parental leave in 2021 were women, in absolute numbers that was 7,172 people.
Hardly any improvement on the labor market
“The goal would be a clear focus on further training that improves the position of the recipients on the labor market,” states the supreme control body in its report. For the majority, the income situation has not improved after the educational leave. The Court of Auditors points out that leaving work can have unfavorable effects on the labor market position of those affected.
The employment rate after part-time training is better. The employment relationship is not interrupted, but only reduced. Three years after part-time training, 66 percent of recipients earned more than before.
Only hobbies excluded
The RH criticized the fact that the current law does not define the type of further training measure for educational leave and contains low content requirements. According to the report, the Unemployment Insurance Act should therefore be revised “in the sense of implementing an ambitious further training obligation as a prerequisite for receiving further training allowance”.
Only those that clearly serve hobby or leisure purposes, such as yoga courses, are currently excluded from state-funded further education measures, provided they are not actually useful for a job in individual cases.
It is not always checked
According to the RH, it is also not always checked whether the courses are actually attended. As a further measure, the ACA therefore recommended that those taking educational leave and part-time educational leave receive confirmation of their participation in the further training measures.
In addition, a declaration of commitment could be introduced for the application for further education or part-time education allowance, in which, for example, reporting obligations for course interruptions are recorded. But it should also include the possible reclaim of the further education and part-time education allowance in the event of non-fulfillment of the further education obligation.
Possible since 1998
The possibility of educational leave has existed since January 1998. Employees can take up to a year off for training and further education. During the period of parental leave, there is a training allowance that corresponds to the unemployment benefit, basically 55 percent of the previous net income. The AMS is responsible for processing.
Since the required pre-employment period was reduced from three years to half a year, the number of recipients has risen sharply. In 2021, an average of around 14,000 people took educational leave, twice as many as in 2010. The expenditure paid for by unemployment insurance in 2021 was around 300 million euros and, according to the Court of Auditors, was almost three times as high as in 2010.
NEOS detects “negligence”
In a reaction, NEOS social spokesman Gerald Loacker underlined the task of educational leave. “Educational leave should primarily serve the risk groups on the labor market, i.e. less qualified and older workers. It was certainly not invented to extend the baby break,” said Loacker in a broadcast. According to the NEOS social spokesman, the state should “buy out” workers that are not wanted from the labor market with insurance contributions. “In times of massive staff shortages, this is downright negligent.”
