After Spain and Portugal, Italy now is likewise interested in the dual vocational education and training system. In Naples, Federal Labour Minister Ursula von der Leyen and her Italian colleague Elsa Fornero have signed a memorandum, which provides for exporting the successful German apprenticeship model to Italy.
Throughout Southern Italy, youth unemployment is at more than 50 per cent and thus way above the country-wide average of 36.2 per cent. Moreover, young people in Southern Italy and other Southern European countries often spend years working in badly paid jobs and in precarious working conditions without a skilled labour training provision. Many enterprises have no need for either too many university graduates or badly trained non-academics.
According to the German Federal Ministry of Labour, the ministers have agreed on the intensified co-operation of both countries regarding their respective labour market policy. Moreover, von der Leyen's ministry announces that, in the coming year, the International Placement Services of the Federal Employment Agency will implement a major information campaign in Southern Italy.
Germany's well-trained apprentices are considered a decisive contribution to the strength of the German employment market and to the high degree of competitive capability of the German economy. By now, more and more countries therefore adopt the German "dual system". In this system, the enterprise carries the main responsibility for the vocational training provision. The vocational school teaches additional theoretical basic knowledge. This way, the apprentices are to become acquainted with the working life at an early stage.
According to the German Federal Ministry of Education, the practice-oriented vocational training provision within the enterprise is a considerable factor contributing to the attractiveness of vocational education and training amongst school graduates. More than 50 per cent of school graduates choose an occupation requiring vocational education and training. About 20 per cent of these have a university entrance qualification and therefore could also choose to study.
By now, vocational education and training has become an export hit in particular in the Southern European countries that are so badly affected by youth unemployment. Yet not only the employment market benefits from a dual system. According to the latest innovation indicator compiled by the Deutsche Telekom Foundation, economies featuring a combination of in-company and school-based vocational education and training have a greater innovation capability than economies focusing primarily on a school-based system. Spain and Portugal likewise intend to largely adopt the German system.
In Berlin, Federal Education Minister Annette Schavan and her Portuguese colleague Nuno Crato have signed an agreement stipulating the exchange of apprentices and pupils. At the same time, education experts and responsible enterprise representatives from both countries are to regularly meet and exchange information. In September 2012, according to Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, 35.1 per cent of the under-25-year-olds in Portugal were without a job. By comparison, the youth unemployment rate in Germany is at 8.0 per cent. A similar agreement with Spain was signed in July.