Can Germany’s renowned vocational education system be exported?

This debate was not new when I wrote an essay for a competition as a schoolboy in 1979. In fact, I believe the original idea of the system that I went through was to have a vocational element that never came to pass. The trouble seems to be that it takes a very long time to conceive, design, implement and operate a new system, and politicians have short horizons. There is also the long-standing image of my own subject of engineering. I doubt that most of the public would recognise my work and that of many of my colleagues as engineering since there is a very old-fashioned perception in society.

I think as long as higher education is suffering from increasing tuition costs many prospective students have to make a decision if a college degree is still worthwile if the job market does not guarantee a job after graduation. Therefore, a vocational training could be a good alternative for certain positions. After all, a college degree can still be achived also in later years.

1979 was a key time for UK industry - the Finniston Report came out which encouraged some control over the engineering profession to try to get our status up with the other "respected" professions. The end result made the controls tighter for professional membership but nothing happened on the respect part. Indeed Thatcher & co. used "industry" to mean "problem" and cast our country to bankers, lawyers and accountants which ultimately meant the only commerce that really grew for three decades was gambling and entertainment. The ability to create real things ebbed away to Asia and the rest of Europe, the USA followed a similar line. We could then but can't now, make our own: cars, railway equipment, power stations (conventional, renewable or nuclear), medical equipment, ships, ... Because at every step there has never really been government support to buy anything but the cheapest - invariably from other continents where the people who do the work are practically slaves. Some of them have learned, initially by copying then by sending their young to get educated, now they can educate themselves - in all the dirty "Industry" skills and ... in all the other skills. How long will it take for our last big sector - finance - to be offshored? What will be left: "England, England" (Julian Barnes 1998)?

Until the UK has a grown up and neutral discussion about the distinctions between Education and Training, devoid of vested interest, there is little point in importing anything from anywhere which purports to advance any vocational development. Proper Universities, i.e. those prior to 1992, were never responsibility for their students' employment and neither should they have been; their mission was predominantly Education and not training. Medicine has always been a notable exception. Polytechnics, however, have accepted some responsibility for their students' future employment because they were largely preparing their vocational graduates for formal 'Professional Certification' under the auspices of Professional bodies, something Universities did not do. FE Colleges were supposed to have been where general principles of the multitude of professional trades were explained to young, wannabe skills based professionals. Formal education was not at the core of what they did ... they focused only on the applied and directed support required of their training in their workplace. Licences to practice enable an individual to apply for a position within their chosen profession because they have been formally adjudged BY A PROFESSION/INDUSTRY to have the minimal credentials to do. Some practising industry individual(s) will have declared that the holder of their professional body's certificate has made the 'grade' and can be trusted to perform to a minimal professional standard. No professional has ever been issued with this kind of certificate by any educational establishment regardless of where they appear on the Education - Training spectrum. No pupil or student ever exits their place of learning as the finished article ready for employment in a chosen field. ALL of them are required to be trained to a minimum standard and it's the role of the employer to do so. Over the years many employers have complained of the cost of training an individual only to lose them after that training has finished. The same employers seem not complain when they gain a suitably trained individual from another company!! So, part of the grown up discussion requires a new vision to emerge which identifies the universal benefit of education and training. A wider vision about economy and community. A supportive attitude without an immediate payoff. This vision and this attitude is what Germany has and it is what the UK, at the moment, does not understand. So what is the point of importing it??