From June 2021, anyone with an intermediate school-leaving certificate can apply for the "Fachoberschule Polizei". From next school year, the Ministry of Schools and Education and the Ministry of the Interior will be testing a new course. Pupils at eleven vocational colleges will be able to obtain a technical college entrance qualification and complete a practical year with the police.

Minister of Schools and Education Yvonne Gebauer: "The state government is now opening up access to the police enforcement service to applicants with an intermediate school-leaving certificate, thereby implementing another plan from the coalition agreement. This new course complements the tried-and-tested pathways into the police civil service. The educational diversity in North Rhine-Westphalia is our strength and the expansion of the school entry into such an important professional field in the police represents a great benefit for our students. The selected vocational colleges will thus offer another attractive option with the new course in the future."

Interior Minister Herbert Reul: "Not only high school students can be good police officers. There is also police potential in people with an intermediate level of education. We want to promote this potential. After all, the police are accepted above all when they reflect the breadth of the population. Secondary and comprehensive school pupils with an intermediate school-leaving certificate can, want to and should be good police officers. We promote diversity by also enabling them to apply to join the police force."

At the presentation of the new school model on Thursday, Yvonne Gebauer and Herbert Reul announced the eleven vocational colleges at which the new course will initially be offered. They are: the Konrad-Klepping-Berufskolleg in Dortmund, the Klaus-Steilmann-Berufskolleg in Bochum, the Rudolf-Rempel-Berufskolleg in Bielefeld, the Max-Weber-Berufskolleg in Düsseldorf, the Kaufmännische Berufskolleg Walther Rathenau in Duisburg, the Berufskolleg an der Lindenstraße in Cologne, the Ludwig-Erhard-Berufskolleg in Bonn, the Berufskolleg Kaufmännische Schulen des Kreises Düren, the Hansa-Berufskolleg in Münster, the Kuniberg Berufskolleg in Recklinghausen and the Berufskolleg Königstraße in Gelsenkirchen.

Around 300 places are available for the 2022/23 school year. In addition to the advanced technical college entrance qualification, students acquire police-specific knowledge in the two-year course, such as in law and political science. At the same time, they secure a conditional promise of employment for the North Rhine-Westphalia police force and thus for the subsequent Bachelor's degree course at the University of Applied Sciences for Police and Public Administration, provided they successfully complete the course and continue to meet the requirements under civil service law.

Year 11 includes a one-year internship at a district police authority. In addition to guard duty in a patrol car and insights into criminal investigation work, the internship offers a wide range of other compulsory and optional modules. The administrative areas of the police are also on the timetable, as are on-site training units in the training center of the respective internship authority and in the training centers of the State Office for Training, Further Education and Personnel Affairs of the NRW Police.

Year 12 then consists exclusively of lessons and concludes with the Fachhochschulreife examination. Police officers are also involved in the teaching work.

The new course is aimed at graduates who have achieved an intermediate school-leaving certificate or the entitlement to attend the upper secondary school and have not yet reached the age of 35 on September 1st of the beginning school year. Applications for an internship are submitted centrally to the State Office for Training, Further Education and Personnel Affairs of the NRW Police (LAFP NRW) and are possible from 01.06.2021.

For interested parents and teachers, an online Q&A session on the FOS police will take place on Saturday, April 24, 2021. Registration via: fos.lafp [at] polizei.nrw.de (fos[dot]lafp[at]polizei[dot]nrw[dot]de). Pupils can find further information on the social media channels of the North Rhine-Westphalia Police (Careers).