"A national lighthouse casting its beam over international waters" is how the Federal Minister for Education and Research, Dr. Annette Schavan, described the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) at the opening ceremony in the auditorium of the University of Bamberg. Headed by Professor Dr. rer. pol. Dr. h. c. Hans-Peter Blossfeld, the NEPS cluster of excellence is studying educational processes and competence development from infancy to retirement age. The project has been evaluated scientifically by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation, DFG), and is receiving both federal and state government support. It is being financed by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (Federal Ministry of Education and Research, BMBF). The NEPS is not only expected to decisively improve the framing conditions for empirical education research in Germany but also to provide an empirical basis for advising policymakers.
On February 3, 2009, the BMBF and the University of Bamberg invited visitors to the grand opening ceremony of the National Educational Panel Study in the university auditorium. About 350 national and international representatives of science, politics, and practice attended.
In her welcoming address, the Federal Minister for Education and Research, Dr. Annette Schavan, emphasized the importance of longitudinal educational research for policy and practice: "We have to go beyond snapshots. We need a stronger empirical basis. We need to accompany life spans and educational biographies in order to gain more knowledge and understanding about how they are determined."
Professor Hans-Peter Blossfeld, the principal investigator of the NEPS consortium, emphasized the uniqueness of the research project by referring to the "scientific network of the best German scientists in the field of educational research." The multicohort sequence design of the longitudinal study "makes it possible to provide the Scientific Community with up-to-date data and evidence-based findings," he said.
This was followed on February 4, 2009 by a symposium on the "Research Potential of the National Educational Panel Study." Together with the audience, top-ranking scientists engaged in plenary discussions on "The Acquisition of Education and Competence in the Life Course" and "High-Risk Groups in the Educational System."
After the opening ceremony and the symposium, many of the representatives of science, politics, and practice were well able to agree with Professor Blossfeld's conclusion: "An aging society, declining birthrates, increasing divorce rates, and international migration; it is natural that all these developments will also have consequences for the educational system. They will probably force the structure of educational institutions to change over the next years. This makes it a very good idea to start collecting data now so that we shall be able to accompany the coming reform measures."