ABSTRACT
In the Federal Republic of Germany vocational education, as well as general adult education, is part of educational politics. Nevertheless, job-orientated training and re-training are both usually carried out by industrial and commercial institutions. Thus there are at least two large sectors of adult education. One is the outcome of the legislation of the federal states, and the other is the outcome of the needs of industry and commerce. During the 1960s it was the German Folk High School Association which first discussed the question of full-time staff in the public sector. In the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1960s and early 1970s, called the years of political innovation of the educational system, a number of planning committees were established on both a federal and a national level. Their task was to outline the future structure of preschool, school, university and post-school education.
