On June 18, 2020, the Full Staff Meeting of the National Education Panel Study (NEPS) met for the seventh time. Invited were the staff of the NEPS at the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi) in Bamberg as well as the staff of the nationwide NEPS consortium who are jointly involved in the development of the NEPS. 101 NEPS staff members attended the meeting and exchanged views on the current status and future challenges. As one of the first items on the agenda of the meeting, LIfBi Director Prof. Dr. Cordula Artelt reported together with Dr. Jutta von Maurice on the adjustments and additions to the NEPS survey program caused by the outbreak of the corona pandemic. The Director also thanked the staff for their flexible approach: This not only minimized the negative impact of the pandemic on NEPS, but also made it possible to introduce new survey and testing modes as well as launching an additional online survey in all NEPS cohorts.

Finally, the Director looked back on 10 years of NEPS and thanked the employees on the occasion of this anniversary for their great and continuous commitment.

The representatives of the NEPS staff at LIfBi and at the NEPS partner institutes also looked back on a busy year 2019/20, which, in addition to conducting the NEPS studies in all cohorts, also brought with it the evaluation of LIfBi by the Leibniz Association, the specification of the NEPS surveys in the years 2021-24, the master planning and the numerous working group meetings on cohort restarts in the areas of early childhood, schooling and adults—and finally, of course, the adaptation of the surveys to the corona pandemic. The staff representatives suggested to come up with new ideas for optimizing work processes and collective decision-making within the network. Various models of elected representatives of the LIfBi staff and NEPS employees were then discussed and employees were given the opportunity to contribute their ideas.