VET: can the so-called “dual model” be exported?
From the 15th-18th September 2014, OBESSU Board member Luke Shore was in Winterthur, Switzerland to represent the platform at the International Congress on Vocational and Professional Education and Training. The high-level conference, organised by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Innovation and Research (SERI), brought together 400 delegates from ministries and government agencies from over 60 countries worldwide to share experience of reforming vocational education and training systems. For the Swiss government, this was an opportunity to showcase its relatively successful dual model to the world whilst for other governments, this was a chance for critical reflection on their own systems and an opportunity to learn from international best practice.
Although isolated in the serene town of Winterthur, nestled in the Swiss mountains, the conference couldn’t shake off the overhanging sense of anxiety permeating many skills and vocational education ministries across the world. The economic crisis brought the skills-mismatch and its links to youth unemployment into sharp relief, sending many governments scrambling to reform their underdeveloped vocational education and training (VET) systems. Now, after identifying an effective VET system as key to resolving their youth unemployment crises, they are anxious to make their reforms work.
In this context, international interest grew in the so-called ‘dual model’. The dual system of secondary vocational education, best established in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, combines work-based learning with school-based learning to ensure young people are taught both the theory and the practice; as well as receiving transversal skills and benefiting from the social dimension of education. To many countries, the dual model appears to be a quick-fix. They note the commonality that countries with a dual system often tend to have low youth-unemployment rates and suppose that implementing this kind of system in their countries may be a panacea to their youth unemployment problems. What they don’t realise is that, more plausibly, low youth unemployment rates in these dual-model countries are the consequence of a mixture of different historical, economic, social, political and cultural factors.
Some short-sighted ministries sought a quick-fix though: uncritically extracting the dual model from these countries and attempting to implant it on their own education systems. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t go very well. Every country, and often the regions within a country, has different educational cultures, which require adaptation of policy and practice to suit the local context. Implementing a dual model requires specific educational infrastructure that many countries simply do not possess: such as firms competent to educate; and strong, reliable social partners. Without this, the uncritical implementation of a dual model will be at best, ineffective, and at worst damaging to the education system and VET students. Other governments, however, were more prudent and, post-crisis, established long term strategic cooperation between their education and labour ministries, involving social partners, to identify the key principles of a successful vocational system; then adapting and critically applying them to their local contexts.
But regardless of the strategy adopted, many ministries are paying the price for decades of neglecting their vocational systems; discovering a dearth of experience in their ministries, which makes it difficult to construct a coherent response to the youth unemployment crisis. As a result, ministries came to this conference looking outwards for ideas and input. Yet ministers and government officials were often unwilling to share the faults of their education strategies with their counterparts in other countries, leading to a strange situation where delegates sought solutions by hearing about other national realities but without sharing their own.
It was in this context that OBESSU, invited in its capacity as a permanent observer of the European Commission’s Advisory Council on Vocational Training (ACVT), shared its experience to help guide ministries in the development of effective, ethical and equitable student-centred vocational training systems. From Colombia to Oman, Azerbaijan to Namibia, OBESSU’s representative conversed with education ministries about their national challenges; providing various policy recommendations including: raising the competency of firms to educate; including social partners as equal stakeholders; providing free quality continuous teacher training; balancing curricula between the economic and social dimensions; promoting transversal skills; and integrating qualification frameworks to create permeability between educational paths. OBESSU also stressed the critical importance of ensuring vocational education and training remain a public responsibility, of planning in the long term and of adopting a holistic attitude to education and subscribing to a lifelong learning approach.
OBESSU’s experience as an established, international social partner was appreciated by ministries and with this event, the platform managed to establish itself as civil society leaders in vocational education, not just in Europe but more globally. Whilst we are committed to the harmonisation of VET systems in Europe, we hope that education ministries will consider their specific educational cultures and think critically to ensure that VET systems are designed with students’ best interests in mind. OBESSU is committed to facilitating a better informed international policy debate on vocational education based on the principles of equality, equity and social inclusion and not just the dominant rhetoric of jobs, growth and competitiveness.
Written by Luke Shore, OBESSU Board member
