Apprenticeship systems in England and Germany : decline and survival

Abstract

The issue of how to integrate the next generation into the labour market both quantitatively and qualitatively is common to all nations.In general, vocational education policy in each nation concentrates on its traditional relationship between education/training and employment, and on how responsible companies should be for designing, implementing and financing.The fact that many developing countries and those experiencing economic growth are experimenting with 'alternating' or 'dual/dualistic' vocational training concepts does not primarily indicate a positive attitude towards the German training model (Deissinger, 2003;Stockmann, 1999).Instead it suggests that their governments have recognised the wisdom of a practical learning approach and the importance of imparting the 'right' skills for working life.Despite these aims, vocational training tends to evolve in a way that seriously challenges political and economic traditions and thus tempers passions for excessive reform.However, this by no means excludes adopting ideas from foreign models.While developing countries lack sophisticated institutional differentiation, Europe's specific national attitudes and cultures ensure continuity, either manifestly or latently.Comparative educational science is thus assigned the task of collecting data on training structures and furnishing 'an explicatio', an analysis of the factors, motivations, tendencies and determinants shaping VET (Schneider, 1961; p. 86).Addressing the origins of schooling, Reichwein talks about the 'inherent teleology of its functional relationship to the culture as a whole'.He states that training institutions are more than the product of abstract pedagogical ideas and claims it is a whole array of practical impulses which shape educational systems (Reichwein, 1963; p. 89 et seq.).The system theory view, which regards society as an entity seeking to reproduce and maintain its population, also postulates that the whole system claims the services of societal subsystems (Parsons, 1976).Educational institutions are anything but simple mechanical reproductions of their blueprints.They are the result of responses to a society's needs through its turbulent history (Georg, 1997; p. 83).For this reason, comparative VET research must take a 'multiplane' approach.A simple look at the current and historical contexts of national education and vocational training systems provides insight into countries' idiosyncrasies (Schriewer, 1987; p. 632 et seq.).This stratified approach is particularly important in places where homologous concepts and notions that have endured through history confront one another.In Germany's apprenticeships, the basic model of initial vocational training took on new forms under the Konstanzer Online-Publikations-System (KOPS)