Vocational education and training, the EU labour market and the economic crisis: the cases of the UK and Germany.

Abstract

In the turmoil that EU labour market is going through nowadays, a series of phenomena appeared: unemployment (especially in younger ages) and new and most of the time more flexible forms of employment (like part time, temporary, teleworking, even precarious). This is not something new, since some of these appeared in the US Stock Market Crash in 1929, but never again and more importantly, not in that extend. Apprenticeships and vocational educational and training (VET) routes also evolved and try to cope in the new environment. Lifelong Learning (LLL) in hand with VET is another issue that undoubtedly plays a significant role in today’s society and economy. Every country decides on different strategic point of view and with different priorities towards these matters. At the European level, LLL and VET would supposed to be seen in a similar way and a body like Cedefop, a European Commission Agency might play such a role of harmonizing and coordinating the different individual national policies. But is there such a thing as harmonization in LLL and VET in the EU? This is one of the main issues that this essay will try to enlighten. The two under investigation models will be Germany and UK and the possible common issues and dissimilarities will be analysed in a comparative way.