Because one hallmark of the emerging economy is the necessity for continual learning in the context of work, a logical implication for initial education and training is that schools should give young people some experience in work-based learning. By gaining practice in the deliberate use of work to develop knowledge and skills, young people should be better prepared for a lifetime of on-line learning at work. Some evidence that inclusion of worksite learning as part of initial education does have this effect is presented by Romani and Werquin (1995). They find that young people in France who have participated in work-based learning during their initial education are more likely to engage in continuing training as part of their subsequent employment. Romani and Werquin hypothesize that early participation in work-based learning may start a lifelong habit.
In addition to this possible future benefit, work-based learning has immediate advantages as an efficient method for acquiring knowledge and skill. Evidence on the cost-effectiveness of work-based compared to school-based training has already been mentioned (Elias et al., 1994; Middleton et al., 1993). The educational benefit of work experience may also extend beyond the knowledge and skills that are strictly related to work (Berryman, 1995). As vocational and academic education converge, work-based learning may help students better understand abstract, theoretical ideas by applying them in concrete, practical situations.
The advantages of learning by doing have long been recognized, but lately the opportunity for young people to learn through regular employment has diminished in some countries. Payne (1994) describes the sudden, dramatic shift from work-based to school-based vocational training in the United Kingdom between 1988 and 1992. Sweet (1995) presents evidence of the recent decline in teenage employment in Australia. The recession of the 1990s pushed young people out of work in Sweden and France, as indicated in Figure 4 in the Appendices. In Denmark, the recession brought a shortage of places for apprentices in business enterprises.
Policymakers in many countries have responded to the contraction of youth employment and the perceived importance of productive experience by creating new mechanisms and incentives to promote work-based learning. These initiatives take two main forms: (1) classic apprenticeship or (2) work experience tied to schooling. The basic difference between the two is that classic apprenticeship treats trainees as members of the enterprise, giving them some of the rights and benefits of regular employees as well as some special entitlements. For example, German apprentices receive health and retirement benefits, benefit from special protection against firing, and receive special attention from their instructors (meisters). In contrast, young people who participate in work-based learning that is part of their schooling are still primarily students even though they may be paid for their part-time work.
A good example of a recent policy to reinvigorate classic apprenticeship is the initiative in the United Kingdom to create "modern apprenticeships" for 16- to 17-year-old school leavers. These youth receive government-funded training credits which they can cash in with employers who are able to provide the training required. Unlike traditional apprenticeships, these new arrangements will not require trainees to spend a fixed length of time in the enterprise. Instead, qualifications will be awarded when the apprentice has passed a set of performance-based requirements (the NVQs discussed in the previous section). Prototype programs were developed in 1994 in twelve sectors, including agriculture and commercial horticulture, business administration, chemicals, child care, construction engineering, information technology, and retailing. When the new system is fully up and running, there are expected to be 150,000 apprentices in training (U.K. Employment Department, 1994). This number equals roughly 10% of the age group.
Other countries are also reviving traditional apprenticeship. Spain passed a new apprenticeship law in 1994 (Planas, 1995). In the Netherlands, Streumer (1994) reports that the number of apprentices grew by 50% between 1986 and 1992. The government of Australia has announced plans to introduce a Modern Australian Apprenticeship and Training System, with many of the same features as the new U.K. system.
While some countries are expanding opportunities for work-based learning through classic apprenticeship, many other countries are developing new forms of work-based learning for students who do not receive the full rights and benefits of regular employees in the firms that train them. Most of the new efforts to develop youth apprenticeship in the United States, along with other forms of work-based learning encouraged by the 1994 School-to-Work Opportunities Act, belong in this category. Within this category of school-supervised work experience, some are attached to separate vocational programs, but others are connected with programs that combine vocational and academic instruction. Within the United States, cooperative education is still the most common form of work-based learning for high school students, and it is usually part of a vocational program (Stern et al., 1995). Most of the examples in other countries are also of this kind.
Korea, for example, restructured its three-year vocational high school curriculum in 1992 to include one full year in enterprises. This was intended to attract more students into vocational high schools, and to enhance their adaptability in actual work situations (Cho, 1994). Recent measures to expand the opportunities for vocational high school graduates to enter university also serve to enhance the attractiveness of the vocational program.
Similarly, France is making greater use of unpaid internships (alternance) for vocational students. This began on an extensive scale with the introduction of the vocational secondary diploma (bac professionnel) in 1985, followed by a 1989 law that required students enrolled for vocational or technical diplomas to spend some time in workplaces. For the vocational diploma, the requirement is at least 16 weeks in enterprises during the two-year program. However, "The difficulty was to convince the companies, given that they would not be . . . [the ones to initiate] this alternance, which is tied to the needs of training rather than employment" (OECD, 1994, p. 118). Nonetheless, the fact that hundreds of thousands of vocational diploma students have in fact been placed in enterprises has encouraged the educational authorities in 1992 to extend the practice to the two-year vocational programs that start at age 15 and precede with the vocational diploma program. The university technical institutes are also in the process of adding a third year which will consist mainly of firm-based traineeships.
In Australia, where the proportion of students completing the last two years of secondary education has jumped from one-third to three-quarters in a decade, governments and private entities are working fast to augment the traditional academic curriculum with more practical applications. Sweet (1995) reports that the number of Australian students enrolled in courses with a centrally recognized work-based component tripled in one year, from 1993 to 1994. New "student traineeships" will allow students in years 11 and 12 "to combine their school-based studies with work experience and off the job training." The government expected to fund the purchase of off the job training "for up to 5000 students by 1995-96" (Keating, 1994, p. 93). Policymakers in Canada are also promoting expansion of work-based learning for high school students through cooperative education (de Broucker, 1995). In Sweden, where upper secondary vocational education was extended from two to three years beginning in 1992, students in these school-based programs are now required to spend 15% of their time during those three years in work settings (Gustafsson & Madsén, 1995).
Sweet (1995) notes that work-based learning in Australia is sometimes used to enhance academic studies. Although this practice is growing, it is still unusual, as work-based learning has more commonly been used as a complement to vocational studies. Gustafsson and Madsén (1995) bemoan the fact that the 15% required work experience in Sweden is so far being attached only to vocational classes. Among countries that rely mainly on schools to provide vocational education, it is difficult to find examples of work-based learning tied to a curriculum that is explicitly designed to prepare students both for work and for further education. In the U.S., the 1994 School-to-Work Opportunities Act provided federal money for localities and states to design and implement new school-to-work systems in which work-based learning is a required component. Section 103 of the Act stipulated that work-based learning must be coordinated with school-based learning and relevant to students' "career majors" (which integrate vocational and academic instruction and link secondary with postsecondary education). For example, career academies, which predated the 1994 Act, organize the high school academic curriculum around broad industry themes such as health, computers, or finance, and give students access to work in that industry during the summer and part-time during the year (Stern, Raby, & Dayton, 1992). Other examples in the United States are described by Pauly, Kopp, and Haimson (1995).
Most work-based learning for students takes place in business enterprises outside the school. Since the young people who participate are not regarded primarily as members of the enterprise but as students under the jurisdiction and supervision of the schools, the provision of work-based learning requires the formation of school-business partnerships or at least informal collaborative arrangements. Somehow school authorities and their business counterparts must decide on the general purposes and content of work-based learning; create or select training materials; establish routines for placing and supervising students; evaluate students' performances; agree on disciplinary procedures if necessary; and settle economic issues such as legal liability, transportation, and students' wages. None of this is easy because most educators and employers are unaccustomed to working with each other. Even if companies are accustomed to employing students part-time as in the United States (and increasingly in Australia, Spain, and the United Kingdom), this is quite different from organizing a work placement that serves a primarily educational purpose. For instance, work-based learning under the 1994 School-to-Work Opportunities Act was required to provide "instruction in general workplace competencies, including . . . employability and participative skills, and broad instruction, to the extent practicable, in all aspects of the industry." Bailey (1995) offers a discussion of these issues in the United States.
Even in Germany, despite the careful coordination of firm-based training regulations and school-based curriculum, Rauner (1995) and Koch (in OECD, 1994, p. 123) both criticize the lack of direct, ongoing coordination between the schools and firms that compose the dual system. The teachers responsible for instructing apprentices in vocational schools tend not to meet regularly or often with the apprentices' worksite supervisors, nor do they make regular or frequent visits to the workplace to see what apprentices are doing. Consequently, they may not be able to refer in their classes to problems or situations that students are currently encountering at the worksite.[9]
[9] Jeff King points out, nevertheless, that coordination between educators and employers "is, compared to non-dual system countries, known to be very deep and very comprehensive, from the national level, the state level, the unions, the Chambers which coordinate curricula and exams between schools and firms, the national, state, and regional employers associations, the national association of firms for qualification standards (Q-Verband), and a vast range of other formal and informal contacts and structures for coordination."