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Skills training in the informal economy, known as informal apprenticeship, caters to the skills needs of millions of young people in the Global South. While it predates the development of formal Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) systems, it was not until the 'discovery' of the informal economy in the 1970s that attention was drawn to this important system of training. Despite the importance of informal apprenticeship, it is striking that there has been a paucity of academic research on education and training and the informal economy this millennium. Whilst there have continued to be papers written by staff of international development agencies, academic accounts are now rare. This paper explores the role of informal apprenticeship in the human development of informal apprentices. It presents new data on informal apprenticeship and engages with earlier academic and international policy papers on informal apprenticeship, in an attempt to open new ways of theorising and understanding informal apprenticeship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collective skill formation systems thrive if employers' skill needs are reflected in apprenticeship training programmes and firms offer apprenticeship positions. Occupation-level adaptation processes underpin these systems, which offer upper-secondary level vocational education leading to hundreds of occupations. Yet, it is considered challenging to introduce new apprenticeships in sectors without training tradition. Based on the case of the newly created cableway mechanic occupation, this paper suggests that the institutional context in combination with effortful institutional work allowed a business association to introduce a small new occupation in the Swiss vocational education and training system. The cableway association mobilised firms, legitimised the new occupation towards public authorities, lobbied for more financial support, and fought to gain apprentices. Ten years after the introduction, finally, financial difficulties were overcome, and the apprenticeship institutionalised in the educational landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses attempts to renew apprenticeship over the last three decades in three liberal market economies – US, England and Australia. We conceptualise institutional renewal as entailing both revival, or growth in apprentice starts, and extension, or widening its occupational base. The paper contributes to the literature by considering reasons for the attempted renewal and offering an assessment of the outcomes of renewal. It also contributes to research at the intersection of institutional and comparative training literature by developing the concept of institutional renewal and applying it to apprenticeship. It is concluded that in quantitative terms renewal had some success in England and Australia, but the effect of intervention is more uncertain in the US. The paper also identifies a paradox that policies to promote apprenticeships have undermined the quality of training in England and Australia, leading to questions about the sustainability of renewal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparative studies on 'apprenticeships' in Europe increasingly cover a variety of programmes previously not considered under this heading. The paper explores the potential of a new, combined cultural-historical and functional classification of apprenticeships on the basis of their underpinning training logic. Four main logics are discussed which categorise apprenticeships according to their key purpose and the responsibilities with regard to content, organisation and financing. It is argued that the typology can serve as an explanatory framework for ongoing changes in apprenticeship approaches and may be used for the identification of similarities and common challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brazil faces complex challenges regarding the need to pursue economic growth coupled with the inclusion of diverse segments of society, including people with disability. This paper seeks to highlight historical aspects about the insertion of people with disability in the Brazilian labour market, to secure the need for public policies to guarantee the rights of persons with disability, to reveal some steps the country has taken in this direction, especially in the intersection between vocational training initiatives, mainly in apprenticeship programmes, and the labour market. The paper also highlights some contradictions and obstacles in this path as well some measures adopted for a possible overcoming and development in the inclusion of people with disability in the labour market through vocational education. Adopting bibliographical research regarding people with disability and apprenticeship programmes, we concluded VET programmes for this group helps everyone involved, promoting diversity among the labour market and improving organisational culture of companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper highlights troubling patterns within the Australian School-based Apprenticeships and Traineeships (SBATs) by analysing statistical data of 21,000 of 15–19 year old apprenticeship/traineeship learners engaged in Vocational Education and Training in School (VETiS). It confirms the alignment of social groups to certain qualification fields and levels and provides a compelling picture of the learner profile of SBAT including the type of occupations and qualifications being undertaken at school level. In a complex policy environment, where VET in Schools has been assigned the important task of preparing ‘workforce job-ready’ students for the ‘high skill and high earning roles our economy demands’, we argue that the SBAT pathway is not yet adequate to meet these high expectations. It is not an effective apprenticeship pathway as it potentially ‘locks-in’ already disadvantaged young people to precarious pathways, and reinforces the nature of an already highly gender-segregated Australian labour market. The paper helps to focus attention on endemic weaknesses in the Australian VET system that serve to entrench disadvantage in Australian society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An apprenticeship levy was introduced in England in 2017 to help the government meet its target of 3 million apprenticeships between 2015 and 2020. Training levies have been, until recently, something of an anathema in public policy circles in England with most having been abolished by the mid-1980s as the government moved towards creating a flexible, de-regulated labour market. So why would an apprenticeship levy now produce better results? In this paper, we analyse in-depth employer interviews carried out in 2016 to identify possible impacts of the levy on businesses' approaches to apprenticeships. We consider whether, ex ante, the levy was expected to result in: more apprentices being trained; reconfiguration of existing training structures into apprenticeships; employers 'gaming' the system, with levy funds being used but not producing real gains in training; or, employers writing off the levy. These findings are presented alongside data on apprenticeship starts since the levy's introduction. We discuss the dramatic fall in apprenticeship starts relative to pre-levy numbers. Given the latest figures and our ex ante study of employers, it appears as though even such wide-sweeping change to the programme may do little to overcome longstanding, low levels of employer demand for apprenticeships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The marked and persistent gender segregation in apprenticeship has been well documented. The social construction of 'male' and 'female' jobs is a key factor in the gendered patterns evident in career choice. Research on young women who have chosen careers in male-dominated occupations risks constructing them as 'Other', typically concluding that rather than challenging the gender binary, the women would reinforce it, echoing 'tomboy' identities according to which girls are aligning themselves with boys whilst devaluing femininity. Based on biographical interviews, this paper explores the role of gender in the career decision-making of one German and one English woman motor mechanic apprentice. It illustrates the strongly normative but highly contextual nature of gender as the two women negotiate identities in their quests to live 'liveable lives'. It will be argued that the rich and multi-faceted experiences of these two young women belie stereotypical accounts of gender, suggesting acceptable ways of being in male workspaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transition from vocational education and training to regular employment is an important step in the occupational biography of apprenticeship graduates. In the last decade, the retention rate of apprenticeship completers has remained stable at a high level, and graduates face good job opportunities in Germany. Despite these positive circumstances, not all apprenticeship graduates succeed in the direct transition from vocational training to regular employment and are affected by unemployment. My paper offers deeper insights into training establishment-specific, individual and external regional characteristics that influence the transition process at this crucial point in the employment career. I consider the employment status of apprenticeship graduates by estimating multinomial logit models at three time points after the end of training, namely, one month and one and two years later. Using linked employer-employee data, I find evidence not only that sociodemographic characteristics and training establishment-specific determinants affect the transition at the second threshold but also that regional factors influence the probability of becoming unemployed or remaining with the training establishment after the end of the apprenticeship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many countries, the contours of skills formation systems are traced back to early struggles over control of apprenticeship. This paper uses a curriculum lens to examine two distinctive policy moments in the history of formal apprenticeships in South Africa and to trace the legacy imprint of direct and indirect race-based exclusion as well as the imprint of educational deprivation in social class terms. The policy trajectory shows how an apprenticeship curriculum that had to cater for White working-class youth with low educational credentials led to a steady erosion of the formal knowledge component of the curriculum in favour of practical workplace experience. Alongside race-based exclusion, a neglect of science-based knowledge emerges as a lasting curriculum legacy of apprenticeship trajectories under conditions of segregation, Apartheid and their colonial precursors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper chronicles and analyses the expansion and contraction of the Australian apprenticeship system from 1985 to 2020. The system expanded from a small number of occupations, mainly in craft and manufacturing areas, to include many other occupations, notably in the different types of service sectors. The expansion was achieved primarily through a new type of apprenticeship, known as a traineeship, to augment the existing more traditional apprenticeships. Since 2012, the system has contracted considerably, and the participation rate of women has been affected disproportionately. The period of expansion of the system was book-ended by two major government-instigated documents, in 1985 and 2011. In 1985 a Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry into Labour Market Programs proposed the introduction of traineeships, and in 2011 an Expert Panel on Apprenticeships sought to reduce numbers through the application of specific criteria for government support, which primarily affected the occupations served by traineeships. Two sources of evidence are used to examine the expansion and contraction of the apprenticeship system: data from the national apprenticeship statistics collection maintained by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) and key government reports over the 35 years. A brief overview of COVID-19-related developments in 2020 is included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Referring to historical debates and theories on vocational education and training (VET) since the 19th century and developments up to the present day, this paper considers the cultural conditions that were relevant for the emergence and legitimisation of vocational education and training and, in particular, the dual principle of apprenticeships in Germany and Switzerland. With reference to the theories of German Vocational Education Theory that emerged at the beginning of the 20th century and the concept of vocation (Beruf), i.e. the merging of occupation-based work and education, as it was propagated in particular by Georg Kerschensteiner, the development and establishment of dual vocational training in Germany and Switzerland is reconstructed, in line with what became the institutional framework of apprenticeships in the two countries. It is above all the focus on education in schools through Bildung as a pedagogical concept reaching beyond what may technically be associated with skill formation for jobs, but also the understanding that VET should be given a reliable institutional framework, that were crucial for the emergence and establishment of the modern VET system in both countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the expansive–restrictive continuum of apprenticeship learning in the context of different education and training systems. It compares the English state-funded apprenticeship programme for young people with the Finnish and the French programmes with a specific focus on access to learning through the programmes. These three countries represent three types of Western and Northern European education and training systems. The paper argues that there are country-specific meanings of apprenticeship that influence how access to learning along the expansive–restrictive continuum is typically characterised. These country-specific meanings of apprenticeship arise from their context in differing education and training systems. The paper concludes that the English conceptualisation of apprenticeship as training lends itself to more restrictive approaches to apprenticeship than the Finnish and the French programmes in terms of access to learning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this paper is to ascertain the factors by which Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) affect the employability of graduates in Mumbai, India. The ITIs are major providers of VET in India. Presently, India is part of a skilling revolution with the goal of providing superior quality formal skill training to 400 million people by the year 2022. Consequently, the ITIs are receiving a great deal of attention at the national level. Applying a qualitative approach, data were collected from 15 students, 21 staff members (teaching and non-teaching) and 13 employers associated with the ITIs in the city and suburban area of Mumbai. The findings show a distinct set of six factors by which ITIs affect the employability of graduates—by imparting knowledge and skill, affecting students' attitude and expectations, providing apprenticeship, signalling favourable characteristics, acting as an intermediary between the industry and the graduates and helping build social networks. The conclusion is that ITIs can incorporate strategies to actively enhance the employability of graduates by leveraging these factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the effect of a secondary job on the intention to quit an apprenticeship in Germany. For the empirical approach, the representative German, firm-level study 'BIBB Survey Vocational Training from the Trainees Point of View 2008' conducted by the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) is used. In this study, 5901 apprentices were interviewed during their second year of apprenticeship. To date, literature on early contract cancellation in Vocational Education and Training uses income itself as a determinant, but neglects the consequences of low income during apprenticeship, such as the need for a secondary job and possible secondary-job-related burdens. The probit regressions show a higher intention to quit if apprentices require a secondary job to cover their living costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a journey undertaken by literacy tutors who were caught between incompatible values and needs in building apprentices' literacy. The highly literate tutors were committed to teaching critical literacy. They believed that improved literacy could support learners' aspirations to advance their prospects at work, build their connections within their community and improve their health. Hence, the tutors aimed to guide their learners into membership of an imagined community of fluent readers. They found, however, that the apprentices, along with their managers and training coordinators, saw literacy as instrumental rather than a desired outcome in its own right. Essentially, achieving a sufficient level of literacy was needed for the apprentices to become members of workplace communities of practice. Tutors then questioned their prior assumptions about the intrinsic importance of literacy, slowly accepting a dichotomous way of thinking where industrial ways of learning and knowing were predominant. Tutors' realisation that apprentices already possessed embodied and oral literacies helped them to support the apprentices in escaping (though not leaving) workplace contexts that were becoming increasingly document-driven in character and featuring rising expectations of improved print literacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Around the world, governments, educators and employers have expressed growing interest in German-style methods of technical and vocational education and training (TVET). In such countries, schools and firms share responsibility for providing technical and vocational education, a model often called the ‘dual system of vocational training and education.’ The dual system means that occupational training occurs at two linked sites, educational institutions and workplaces. Dual education aims at matching the demands of a dynamically changing economy with the skill profiles of those graduating from educational institutions. To a large extent, dual education systems enable young people to acquire not simply technical and occupational skill, but broadly defined competencies that serve as the foundation for rewarding careers and social esteem. Little wonder that many countries have turned with renewed interest to the dual TVET system. However, actual implementation of the dual system outside the core Germanic countries in Europe has proven to be extremely challenging. Successful examples of institutional transplantation are rare. However, in some countries, local partnerships embracing elements of dual education have formed, uniting educational institutions, government entities and firms in partnerships to upgrade TVET. This paper discusses some of the characteristic patterns of such partnerships in the U.S. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Around the world, governments, educators and employers have expressed growing interest in German-style methods of technical and vocational education and training (TVET). In such countries, schools and firms share responsibility for providing technical and vocational education, a model often called the ‘dual system of vocational training and education.’ The dual system means that occupational training occurs at two linked sites, educational institutions and workplaces. Dual education aims at matching the demands of a dynamically changing economy with the skill profiles of those graduating from educational institutions. To a large extent, dual education systems enable young people to acquire not simply technical and occupational skill, but broadly defined competencies that serve as the foundation for rewarding careers and social esteem. Little wonder that many countries have turned with renewed interest to the dual TVET system. However, actual implementation of the dual system outside the core Germanic countries in Europe has proven to be extremely challenging. Successful examples of institutional transplantation are rare. However, in some countries, local partnerships embracing elements of dual education have formed, uniting educational institutions, government entities and firms in partnerships to upgrade TVET. This paper discusses some of the characteristic patterns of such partnerships in the U.S. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An apprenticeship in media production in England is at the centre of this case study exploration. The context is exemplified by the organisation of the process of production around project teams and the development of project-based working cultures. Given these developments, the working conditions and learning opportunities presented to apprentices can be characterised as de-centred and distributed. This contrasts with the characterisation of apprentices’ learning as novices who develop expertise in stable, well-bounded vocational communities. Through an analysis of young apprentices’ journeys, we argue that despite the challenges presented, the case study exemplifies the extent to which the apprenticeship is capable of innovation in project working as opposed to full employment conditions. Through its focus on media apprentices’ journeys, this paper makes visible the specific experience of learning in project working, distributed and de-centred working conditions. We conclude by referring to an ideal typical conception of the model of learning underpinning the apprenticeship which may be useful as an heuristic tool for others involved in designing and/or researching apprenticeships in project working conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Successive governments have pledged to enhance the quality of apprenticeship in Britain so as to achieve ‘parity of esteem’ with academic study. Yet, at the same time, the discourse of the academic-vocational divide has dominated the academic, policy-maker and practitioner debates. This paper draws on two recent studies designed to explore the learner identities of apprentices on different apprenticeship programmes: motor vehicle maintenance (level 2) and engineering (level 3). Through this work, we are able to explore the role of the academic–vocational divide in identity construction and to challenge assumptions about vocational learners. It will be argued, that, far from being ‘naturally practical’, the young people draw on normative discursive categories in their construction of continuous identities. The findings raise important questions about the UK apprenticeship system as currently conceived, while at the same time drawing attention to the possibility for change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite expending a great deal of public money, and after many government-led ‘reforms’ to develop an apprenticeship system that rivals those found in other countries, the apprenticeship system in England still faces a number of challenges and failings, not least in the private training market. This paper explores the landscape of private training provision in the context of the most recent apprenticeship reforms and its implications for independent training provision. Reviewing the proposed shift from the provider-led to an employer-led system we suggest that the government is overestimating the readiness of industry to lead apprenticeships in England and will still rely heavily on private training provision. We propose that a high-quality system of apprenticeships requires refocusing from a single-actor-led to a multiple-actor-led system based on good relationships between ‘strong’ actors with shared cost and responsibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper provides a view of the experiences of former high school apprentices in Canada. Conceptually, we draw on the work of Bourdieu with particular attention to vocational habitus, as well as feminist writers who discuss the gendered construction of skill and gender relations in the workplace and family. Empirically, we present our analysis of survey data from 173 male and female apprentices in two provinces and interviews with female apprentices in Alberta. Our data provide insights into youths’ school experiences as well as their subsequent trajectories and plans for the future. Findings suggest that female youth relied more than young men on the support of families and external influences in choosing a trade. Young women in female-dominated trades faced different but no less significant challenges than those in male-dominated trades. Women who succeeded in completing apprenticeship training did so because of their family habitus and expansive training experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In Canada, youth apprenticeships have been promoted as an educational alternative that leads to the development of valuable skills, allows for the opportunity to earn an income while learning and helps youth to gain a head start into lucrative, creative and in-demand careers. Yet, these programmes have remained rather marginal and continue to be perceived as being of lower-status compared to traditional post-secondary educational pathways, such as those leading to university or community college. In this paper, we draw on interview data with former youth apprentices in the province of Ontario to explore their reasons for entering apprenticeships in high school, their experiences in them and their own perceptions about the status and social recognition of apprenticeships. We suggest that policies regarding apprenticeship programmes in Canada need to expand their focus. While emphasis is currently placed on recruiting students by highlighting relatively utilitarian benefits, we argue that more focus needs to be placed on the training offered to apprentices including the commitment of employers to provide quality training on the job, the integration of classroom and on-the-job training and the opportunity for apprentices to move from partial to full participation in communities of practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we consider the issue of the under-representation of young people from minority ethnic/migrant backgrounds in apprenticeships in England and Germany. Whilst there are many studies on apprenticeships in England and Germany, few focus on under-representation or discrimination, even fewer on ethnic under-representation, and there are no comparative studies of the topic. We review the existing literature and drawing on Critical Race Theory, we argue that most studies on apprenticeships and ethnicity tend to confirm rather than challenge stereotypes of these minority groups, and to view young people as autonomous agents able to make (relatively) free choices. We argue that connections should be made between ethnic under-representation and studies of the racial segmentation of the labour market. Drawing on these studies of the labour market, we suggest, innovatively but perhaps somewhat controversially, that it is likely that racialised norms shape expectations of the worker and migrant worker, and of who fits where in the labour markets and vocational training systems. Further, we argue that this challenges popular notions of what constitutes career ‘choices’ on the part of young people. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]