Apprenticeship vs. School-Based VET
We have already touched on different outcomes for “dual” and “school-based” VET. In this post we’ll get more into the difference between the two types. Briefly, dual VET or apprenticeship is when participants split their time between work and school, with at least 25% of their time spent in the workplace. In contrast, school-based VET is almost entirely at school, or with less than 25% of time spent in the workplace.
By Katie Caves
In Entry 11, we touched on different outcomes for “dual” and “school-based” VET. In this post we’ll get more into the difference between the two types. Briefly, dual VET or apprenticeship is when participants split their time between work and school, with at least 25% of their time spent in the workplace. In contrast, school-based VET is almost entirely at school, or with less than 25% of time spent in the workplace.
It doesn’t matter how participants divide up their time between work and school, nor is the order of work and school important. Apprenticeships can still be apprenticeships if workplace learning happens every day, every week, or on alternating periods like every other week or every second semester. It is also fine for the purposes of this definition if the workplace time happens mostly or entirely at the end of the program, as long as it is a formal part of the program. Anything with vocational content and at least 25% workplace time is, by the usual standard, dual VET.
Most successful programs are organized in similar ways because of logistics and cost feasibility for companies, but programs in different contexts can look fairly different and still be apprenticeships.
Similarly, school-based VET includes anything with mostly vocational content and less than 25% workplace time. Practical classroom work or model workshops in school do not count as workplace time, but as part of the school experience. Internships or other work placements that make up less than 25% of the program’s total time also do not make the program an apprenticeship.
Entry 11 looked at specific youth labor market outcomes for dual and school-based VET and found that dual VET overall helps a lot more than school-based VET. If we zoom out to a bigger but non-causal picture, we can see the same general trend. Figure 1 plots youth labor market outcomes against how much of all VET is school-based. The trend is that more-school-based VET seems to be related to worse outcomes.
Figure 1: Youth labor market outcomes are generally worse when VET is more school-based
In contrast, Figure 2 plots youth labor market outcomes against how much of all VET is dual, or in the apprenticeship model. This time, the picture is much different. Again these are only correlations, there is an upward trend of more-dual VET relating to better labor market outcomes for young people. Typical examples of apprenticeship countries—Austria, Germany, Denmark, and Switzerland—are all high on both apprenticeship as a share of all VET and the strength of the youth labor market.
Figure 2: Youth labor market outcomes are generally better when VET is dual
One thing worth noting is that no country has 100% dual VET. The highest is Switzerland, which has about 60% of VET students in apprenticeships as opposed to school-based programs. This is because of variation within Switzerland, where the French-speaking part of the country tends to favor school-based over dual VET programs. The two program types frequently coexist, but to varying degrees.
From a policy point of view, school-based VET sometimes seems easier. The question is one of funding schools, building workshops, and finding qualified teacher-trainers instead of cooperating with companies, putting young people in the workplace, and trusting workers as trainers. However, based on this, the evidence in Entry 11, and what we know about education-employment linkage and power balance, it is better to do the seemingly harder reform. Resituating firms as skills co-providers instead of skills consumers is a big change, but one well worth the effort.