Transition from school to work
Incorpora video
Transition from school to work
In contrast to other countries, youth unemployment did not increase during the recent recession in Germany. This success has been mainly credited to the German training system. This is however not correct. The lecture will discuss the strengths and the weaknesses of the training system in promoting young people’s social inclusion and transitions into skilled employment.
buena sera - ta - da good evening everyone a que salga it's a pleasure to to welcome her in in Trento first participation in a festival of economic in a in Trento and she this afternoon she will speak about the German model the German social model but especially about the things that are going wrong Germans assault which okay sorry okay I will is it okay now okay thank you sorry so I say that I welcome X Olga true yeah but okay and she will speak today this afternoon about the German social model and what what doesn't work in the German social model and in a way can it sounds a little bit like a provocation especially if we compare the unemployment rate in German in Italy or in France in Italy it reached quite 25% 25% France 43% in Italy and to compare with 8% in Germany and so eggs Olga is going to explain us what are the problems the challenge behind the results of the German model what does it mean in terms of social inclusion social promotion social mobility social inequalities this topic at the urge of her research work Akos olga works at VCB in berlin this in south central berlin through social she's director of the research unit called skill formation and labor market and has been professor of sociology at the Free University of Berlin previously she teaches sociology at Leipzig University and work at Max Planck Institute with a research on lack of training employment and life chances of the less educated she's books and articles especially about the debate on the social investment state model in advanced societies the topic was in particular relationship existing between educational and economic inequalities with the conclusion and maybe we'll speak with her about that that the role of education as an equalizer should not should not be overstated she worked also a lot about the social classification and the perception of the class affiliation so now we come back to the perception of German model and and may main is the reality of that German model thank you yeah thank you very much for having such an interest in the German model of apprenticeship and school-to-work transition and what I would like to do is to really introduce you into that model because from the outside it looks much simpler than it is and that would be my the first part of my talk and the second part of my talk is how that is embedded into the social reproduction so how the vocational education and training system really contributes to social immobility instead of social mobility but the theme of the festival I mean I start with this very simple figures and what you see here is the youth unemployment rate into 14 and Vesey of course huge differences I marked and green Italy and red the apprenticeship countries like Germany and Austria and what you see is you have huge differences and youth unemployment for many the apprenticeship system seems to be the reason behind these very low use unemployment rates for several reasons one reason is that it keeps young people in education and the other reason is that they are better trained than in other countries and so what we see now after a long time that the OECD and others we're kind of blaming Germany that it did not increase so much the university graduates but stick to its model of apprenticeship now since the crisis we have a new wave of appraisal the the German model and sorry for taking only English language newspapers but I don't speak Italian so I couldn't see whether that is also a debate and Italy but I guess and here you have the English version the German economic strengths the secret of the success and then the sub that the title of the photo is it's because of the vocational education in Germany or take Ireland saying we don't need higher education we need more apprenticeship education or take the u.s. again the secret or the success in the crisis is hardly seen in the apprenticeship system now apprenticeship systems have of course to do that you have firm based training and firm based training of course is it's based on whether you have very functioning firms and you have also in the in the at EU level the European alliance for apprenticeships and part of that alliance is that there's the idea that you could send young people from Spain Italy to Germany to do their apprenticeship there and then go back to the countries and work there but if we look at the youth unemployment rate and the connection to the overall unemployment rate then we see there is actually not a miracle of apprenticeship what you see is the lower the overall unemployment rate is no matter what what if you have a vocational education and training system or not the youth unemployment rate is low if the overall unemployment rate is high the youth unemployment rate is high so what you actually have if the economy is functioning well then although the labor market entry for young people is functioning well if the economy is functioning not well then it doesn't matter what the training system is I could finish my lecture at that point to say there's nothing to say for the apprenticeship system but I will continue and I will show you it has part of that is still to the to the vocational education and training system and the apprenticeship system is only part of that one part of that overall vocational education and training system and that other parts of that system are more responsible for having low unemployment rates no matter what the economic cycles are ok so the lecture is structured in the following way that I would like in the first part as I said to introduce you into some insights into the German vocational education and training system and to make it not to say every time vocational education and training system I use the term wet system and it's more than what you learn in a minute it's more than the apprenticeship system the second is then to show you how that system contributes to social mobility and inclusion where are the strengths but we are also the reproduction part of that system comes in and I finished with a summary on the weaknesses the challenges to the system and to make it positive and the end I finished with the strength of systems and not versus weaknesses okay let's start there's the first things of what is the German vocation education and training system mostly not only from the outside Germany but also inside Germany mostly when we talk about the German system we think about these pictures becoming a bank clerk becoming a nurse becoming a car mechatronics or industrial mechatronics that is seen as you know the German model but as I will show you the German model it's much more than these kind of more highly qualified trained occupations so the first part is indeed if we look in to new enrollments into the bed system that about half of these young people who enter the vet system are indeed in this what we know as apprenticeship system dual system which is employment-based workplace based training where people have young people have three days working in a firm two days staying at the vocational school and that for the majority for three years there are some training that are three and a half years some trainings that are two and a half years but the majority for three years it goes like that three is working at three days working two days being in a school these occupations that are in this is in the what we call the Jewish system because of the workplace and the school-based training together it's organized or regulated by the further vocational training act and all the things that are happened there have to be negotiated by four partners that is the federal government the governments of the sixteen states and the two social partners employers associations and the trade unions and they negotiate about training regulations for each occupation so in the 1950s we had 901 of these training regulations for each occupation you can think of we it's separate training regulation now we managed in the in the last 50 to 60 years to reduce that number into broader occupations but still we have three hundred nine twenty nine different training regulations for the different occupations if you compare that through Austria there they have about 200 240 if you compare that to Denmark they I have about 127 so and every time you want to change one of these regulations the four partners have to negotiate so it takes some time to modernize this kind of regulations but it's also of misunderstood it's not okay apprenticeships to not only take place in manual jobs manual occupations but also in service occupations and so you what I have here as the figures about 40 percent of the young men that are trained as apprenticeships are trained in service occupations like bank clerks or insurance Clerk or something like that of course for females since the German labor market is a very segregated labor market in the young women are trained to 88% in this kind of occupations and more in service occupations not and trafficked occupations and assert a last thing on that is that not all German firms are involved in apprenticeship training the first thing is you have to be to get entitled through to apprenticeship so you need a trainer you need certain conditions to really provide qualified training and about 50 percent of the German firms have these have this entitlement to be allowed to train young people but the last figure tells you that only about 25% of the German firms train that means 75 percent of the German firm do not train from the outside it always is a it's a question especially among economists why 25 percent of the firm's put effort into training and train of course also for the other 75 percent and bun can only understand that as the historical process and a kind of society commitment and of course among these 25% the large firms like demons VW etc are involved very much so they they train as a kind of their recruitment strategy okay now you might wonder what are the other about the other half of the German vocational education and training system oh now before I say that I sorry I come that looks like every occupation every training in that system in in apprenticeship is the same but it isn't within these twenty five percent we can differentiate for segments we have a lower segment a lower middle segment upper middle segment and the highest segment and what are the definition of the segment is it's based on the skill level these training sets but also on deployment career prospects is these different occupations have so let's start with the lower segment so we do have apprenticeship to become a plumber but also for example we have apprenticeship for three years to become a shop assistant and these occupations even though you are trained and have a higher risk of becoming unemployment afterwards so the unemployment risk or the unemployment rate of a shop assistant is 14 percent so it's for German circumstance it's very high and about one third of the train shop assistants a marginally employed afterwards meaning that they earn 400 euros per month of course they have all the little very little work hours but it's not their choice I mean it's more like the sectoral likes this kind of flexibility to have a lot of of employees this very low social security standard so you don't have to pay Social Security and to be flexible in terms of working hours to have long shopping office hours etc and then the middle the lower middle are a lot of craft occupations and lower service management occupations and then it goes up to the highest segment and the highest segment is like bank clerks Insurance clerks IT specialist and you see the unemployment rate for them later on is 1% it's even lower than for the university graduates and this segment is actually a segment which in many countries you find in the college sector which is in Germany still in the apprenticeship sector so the first thing to note is to have an apprenticeship does not mean that the quality and the career prospects of when you complete an apprenticeship is the same for all but that we have huge differences with within the sector now become what is the other half of the vocation education and training system we have another segment sector that is the school so called school based programs and these are still full qualifying it's still at for qualifying sector so the programs are there mainly in heads occupation and Social Work so to become a nurse in Germany you go to a school-based so-called school-based program the or you become a social worker you don't go to a university you do it in a school-based sector and these these programs vocational education and training programs as I will show you after to require an abbot or that is a kind of a high school degree so the the apprentices who do that could also go to universities and these young people if they finish that have rather high employment prospects in terms of security but since these are mostly female type occupations the salary compared to what they have to train the salary are rather low now if you look at both sectors the point is that they do not so much differ in terms of whether they have the combination of workplace and school training because also the nurses go three days a week into a hospital and do their training and stay two days a week in a school why we call the Mansingh the dual system and the other thing the school-based system has only to do with the governance structure these occupations do not fall under the vocational training Act so these these programs are governed by by the sixteen German states so the the social partners are not involved and the federal government is not involved but it's and in in contrast to to the apprentices they don't have apprenticeship contract with a firm so they don't get an apprenticeship wage they actually are living from their parents so they wire these young people have a kind of an income an apprenticeship wage paid by the firm these young people don't have an income they just do the same without it and both sectors in both sectors even so they are governed differently the the degrees you get you can't can transfer between firms so if you learned to become a nurse and one hospital it is recognized and other hospitals if you learn to become a karmic mechatronic and one firm you can move to another firm and that is also recognized and we put you into a certain layer of the wage of the wage now the since the places are restricted these two segments are very compared to a competitive but I will show you now this figure is the young people interested in this kind of for qualifying training and that blue figure the blue line is what firms provide as training places and you see that that figure doesn't change that much that figure changed very much and that has to do with cohort sizes so if the school-leaving cohort is large then of course you have more young people who want to enter an apprenticeship is the cohort size smaller than it is you have a lower part and now you are wonder what happened so if you have sometimes we have really huge apprenticeship you could say apprenticeship gets namely the difference between what the demand by young people and to supply by the firm sometimes like in the early 90s that is that is quite and balance if you don't look at regions and we are not looking here at if the book if the occupations match so if what young people want to become trained and the places the firm's provide in terms of occupations but at least you know in terms of numbers it was quite good but for most of the time we have much more young people who want to become to want to be trained than we have training places and this shortage is not taken up by fully qualifying training but by a huge segment what we call the pre vocational programs and in these pre vocational programs every year about a quarter of a million young people enter so these quarter of a million young people they actually we are searching for an apprenticeship but we are not successful in getting an apprenticeship place the system so it's that's why it's included programs they are very different programs you have some are completely school-based so the students go five days a week to a school some have some links to firm so they also have a kind of a match but the the length is about up from half a year to one year and in some programs you can earn a higher school general square degree but definitely you do not earn a training degree so and when we look what happened to the young people you could say you know at least they are not unemployed so these young people who are in this sector lower the German annum use unemployment rate because we just instead of letting them become unemployed we keep them in that in the education system so they don't pop up in the unemployment rate now you could say that is at least one advantage and it is of course I mean it's it's some structure but we have to look concerning what they do afterwards because it could also increase frustration if you have one tree vocational training after the others and most young people have more than just one tree vocational if they can't enter eventually and attract and fully qualifying training then of course they get demotivated in and further and further getting engaged in training education etc and here we have a difference we have for some it is really a rating loop that they are just in their region are not enough training places so they stay for one year in the in a previous measurement and then they and the next year they enter a training place that's more for the ones that have a Intermediate School degree they don't have a high school degree but they have a lower secondary school degree meaning they have two languages they have signs etc but in Germany we also have a low a very low school degree and these for these young people if they and and I will show you they mostly enter these kind of programs only one-third of them eventually makes will make it after some of these pre vocational programs into a real apprenticeship program okay now to sum up the first part so we have different different school degrees as I said we had school leavers with no school to even believe we have school leavers who have lower school degree and intermediate square degree and a university degree all of them are entitled by law to enter an apprenticeship there is no regulation on that you have to have a certain degree the only thing what we have for the tertiary education level be more or less you need as a requirement a university degree but in in this sector in the vocational education and training sector actually there is no formal and I will show you now that even so there's the Juba no formal requirement de facto they are requirements and these requirements have not only to do with skills these requirements have also to do with social background and here I come to the second part how does this system of vocation education and training contributes to social I would rather say immobility than rather mobility in terms of that people from lower classes can add up high and higher classes than their parents and vice versa the first thing we have to note is that enjoy that in Germany the relationship between the educational degree of the parents and the education a degree achieved by the children is among the highest so it's among the closest relationship and I gave you not hear the numbers in terms of how many percentage but rather in a kind of ranking so in Finland this link is weakest so the mobility is highest in Finland that also people from children from lower classes can achieve higher degrees their parents whereas in Germany its among the countries that are really at the other end of the of distribution if we look at competencies it's the same you I guess you know the PISA study if you asked how how strong is a link between the competencies students have acquired in school and the education of the parents again Germany is with Belgium and Hungary among the countries with the closest link Finland is among the countries is the countries with the weakest link okay that's why in the following when I talk about social mobility I would talk about the connection the link between entry between access to vocational training and school education and degrees of students because de facto we talk not only about skills we also talked about social background because the different school degrees are very much structured by the class structure the social class structure of Germany now let's make a begin with this historic approach and then come soon to the to say again to the to the time today these are the apprentice this the the hundred precent are apprentices young people in apprenticeship in 1970 and these are into 2011 and what you see here is what is the distribution of their school degrees and what we see is that in 1970 about 80% of them had a lower square degree the loss or even no school degree and only 20% had intermediate or high school now if you look today that has changed dramatically now about only 1/3 has the lower school achievement the majority has intermediate school achievement and even about a quarter has a high school degree meaning these young people could also go to university but have taken an apprenticeship so you see a huge educational increase in in the distribution so it's not the the vocation education and training system is not anymore for low achievers it's much more for higher achieving young people if you look at the three sectors so to which of the sector's the different groups have access you see that that's pretty similar to what I have shown you just before for the school based sector remember these are the nurses kindergarten teachers social workers they even find that it is even less inclusive for low achieving young people because only 80% have a low school degree 55 57% have intermediate school degree and 24% having even a university entrance qualification and if you look at the pre vocational programs you see that actually the ones that is the programs are filled with what the the apprenticeship system used to be namely for the ones that have the lowest school degrees now looking at the four segments of the apprenticeships I you before we see the same structure in the lower segment you remember these are the chopped assistant and plumbers we do see if the ones with lower school degrees can make it into an apprenticeship it's mainly the lower segment the occupations that are stooped even if you are trained and precarious in terms of employment career and if you go up the ladder from the lower middle to the upper middle to the highest segment you see the increase of those having higher school degrees and coming from higher classes so what you see as a replicate in the in the vocation education and training sector you see the replication of the social stratification of the German society at the bottom are the lower classes and the higher segments of the of the sector are the higher classes and the same is true if we if we now look coming more from the young people the school leave us who have no school degree they mainly end up in the vocational training in the provoke Asia if you look at the lower secondary school degrees they part of them maked but as I showed you rather to the low lower occupations and if you look at the universe it's also a university entrance qualifications they have a very low risk that they don't make it into apprenticeship if they like I mean they always have the option to go to the University where it's much less competition because you just go there and start to study so now the other problem is that although the apprentice if you finish an apprenticeship or school based fully qualifying school based training that is recognized as an upper secondary education degree so it it actually is classified at the same level as a beat or the university entrance qualifications the general upper secondary education degree nonetheless it is very difficult for those who finished who live as an intermediate degree then to an apprenticeship and then if they would like to go to the University and what you see here is that oops these students because they are even caught I mean that is all the the narrative of German universities they are caught the non-traditional students because the traditional ones are the ones that do their general upper secondary degree at the gymnasium so these are the real students and then we have some non-traditional students that are the ones coming via a vocational training and you see the fact oh these are two percent of the university population so as I said the jouvert there would be a lot of possible mobility within the German system de facto it's a very segmented and stratified system and the vocational training system really contributes to the reproduction of the German society transferring from the children to the parents now I come to my summary of what are the weaknesses and the challenges and the strengths and as I said so the weaknesses are more and more in Germany how to integrate the low achieving young people because the problem is I mean you could say in Italy also a lot of people don't have a university degree and don't have a training but in Germany there are about 15% and so in in the German model you are only a person if you have either a vocational completed vocational training and eternal education program or a university degree if you have neither a completed training nor university degree you are not a person on the labor market so what we do see is that these these people have a very high unemployment rate have a very high rate of living of Social Security and that from the very early beginning so by the age of 25 if you don't make it into the university or into a fully qualifying training program you know as a person that you have no chance on the labor market anymore so there's also not much mobility after afterwards the second is that as I told you the regulation of the occupations so we have C's 329 plus the ones in the school sector so let's say we have about 500 occupations and you do need a degree to enter these kind of occupations in the labor market if you want to change your occupation you either have to do a new apprenticeship which is difficult if you are order than 25 or you start to work as a semi or unskilled worker so you have a downward move because if you are once a plumber you are it's not so easy to become a construction worker you might become that but not on the wage level of a skilled worker so although the power mobility between occupations it's a problem and about one-third of the of the graduates from apprenticeship systems change the occupation already in the first year after graduation so it's not that they are lifelong in their occupation but they finish have their completed training program and then still work as an unskilled or semi-skilled worker because they are not working in their occupation and then as I said the permeability between the vocational education system and the higher education system is really it's very problematic so one could conclude one of the really key Knossos and that is in the literature for many years or also is that it contributes to social mobility in the German society and that immobility starts of course in school but then is reinforced with the segmentation of the training system now what are the challenges one of the main challenges is of course that the technological development in in industry is faster than we can readjust our training regulations I told you that the four partners are involved and they have to negotiate and they have to find a compromise there was there's not that one of them has the major sale so it's really so far based on an agreement of all four so that takes time to negotiate so technological change the speed of technological change nowadays it's faster than we are able to modernize our training regulations and the second thing is I will show you last graph it's that we have a decreasing attractiveness for the higher at for the higher achieving school leavers if you look at the mid-1990s you see that about 40 percent entered an apprenticeship about 20% the University and another 15% the school based programs now if you look at over the last 10 years or 15 years you see that the apprenticeship share has declined and the University share has increased and in the last three it was the first time in the German history that we had the same share the same number of young people entering the university as entering the apprenticeship or school-based programs and it's for firms it is not clear what will be the future if if the green line is still increasing or if the Green Line is flooding and the apprenticeship line is increasing again and that creates a problem problem for the firm's I will tell you in a minute but you see here also is you know the the part that is adjusting to the economic cycles to the business cycle as you see here that is our the pre-vocational training programs it's not the school-based programs by the by the state so they are rather flat so it really adds the demand is too large that is taken up by the pre vocational programs so the the problem for the firms is now that more and more of these higher achieving young people get an rb2 so a university entrance qualification and go to university so part of the young people they we had in former times and our apprenticeship and school-based programs are now not available anymore for firms and so firms have can do two things to increase the number of can a trend to ship candidates they can either go for the low achievers and try to readjust their training to and to get more out of these people in these pre-vocational training measures because they are more than 250,000 all they can invent new things for the ones that have an rb2 one would like to study and at the moment it looks like if the people if the firm's go more for the second pool of young people and they there's a since the last 10 years an increasing number of so-called dual study programs that is they combined not vocational foods and workplace training they'll combine apprenticeship training and university programs so these young people make complete obtain their bachelor degree and an apprenticeship degree at the same time within three years and these programs are very attractive so they attractive also in terms of that they attract school leavers with an rb2 of it's very very good grade so it's very competitive competitive because the firms paint so the university graduates and these programs get a payment namely for the apprenticeship part and these are mostly the apprenticeships that also pay high like bunk becoming a bank clerk becoming IT specialist specialist so it's more like in these higher-level service jobs and in the in the ones that are close to become engineering so they combine then mechatronics with the engineering part so they are very attractive and to just give you a nama if you look at demons one of the biggest firms in Germany they train each year they have 7,000 new incoming young people do in former times these seven Tagle apprentices today three and a half as 3500 are apprentices and 3500 are going to the dual program so the firm's better seems to be more the direct where they go in the future to attract higher achieving people and as I said I mean that creates somehow a shrinking middle so the firms don't like to take the low achievers they still fight for the high achievers and we have a shrinking birth cohort sizes in Germany so they have actually the the traditional pool becomes smaller and smaller and another problem waters in this shrinking meter there are also a lot of migrants and so far what all experiments and studies shows German firms discriminate against migrants and today we have about 40% of the birth cohort are migrants so if they continue in the future to discriminate then the pool of candidates gets even smaller and if the poor gets smaller than of course it's not clear whether the training system in Germany really will survive because if you don't have people to be become trained any more than there's no system so if it is not attractive for both sides then it is not a system anymore now let me finish as I said business strengths and I think there is some strengths and in terms of those who make it into the apprenticeships they are integrated quite early into the labour market so in comparison to other countries we don't have this very strong polarized qualification structure on the one hand you have the 50% that have some college university education and the other half has nothing so that is not the case in Germany so you have a rather broad inclusion into qualification in Germany and also for the low achiever for the low and intermediate achievers you do have some paths into the labour market and that quite early but as you see this this figure you really have to make it into the apprenticeships because about 60% of the apprenticeship graduates are then hired by their apprenticeship firms so there is not much hiring outside and but you also can say it's I didn't talk talk at all about the German school system which is really special but could say because it has so many tracks and specializes and so many things so it's really very differentiated and that creates also that the lower part of the educational distribution has very poor opportunities to acquire skills general skills and one could say by keeping these young people after compulsory education so after grade 9 or 10 three more years in in education also increases their skill level so it might the the training system might might agates some of the problems we have in the school system because most of our young people if they make it into the vocational training and education have 13 years of education and as I said also in the vocation is who they are not only trained in their occupation but they have math they are reading their physics after second language so because it is then recognized as a per second as a vocational a per second education degree so I think that is also one could say the kind of strength to provide more young people to keep them longer in the education system to provide them with more skills and I think that's it thank thanks to hikers Olga for that's information very very important and I would like to you to to ask if you have some question I would have several question I will ask first one you spoke a little bit about the trade unions the German trade unions in so many countries especially in Italy but also in friends are taken also like a model I would like in that in the topics about social mobility and exclusion inclusion what is what is the duty what is the position of the of the German trade unions and of course if you have some questions probably because of time you didn't spoke about the the German educational system but actually we can get a real picture about the success or the failure of this system without having at least an idea about educational German system as you know better than me you have at least four school types now you know that the handicapped people are discriminated in what you call Sandow school and then you have hope Shula real Shula gymnasium gymnasium is reserved for the lead probably the ten percent of the population and you have this huge number of people I mean real truly hope Shula Sandow shulam and those people as I know they got probably just a few if not nothing as education and I still keep asking so how they made it I mean because I tried in my own to speak with people from this the excluded ones I mean Sandow shuuran we actually and hopefully these people have as you know probably the last study of the University of Hamburg have said at least or seven millions of Germans that they can't read and they can't write so how Germany that is confronted with these huge problems can made it to give lessons to other people how to they better their systems okay I said okay pass of Mike yeah so let's start with the trade unions the visit rate union set has changed over the years so in the beginning of the nineties I mean of course they were more looking at the level of apprenticeship and the quality of apprenticeships and the debate about the pre-vocational training measures they are they said you know there are not our clients because they are not yet in the firms and and then when we talked to them we said you know but these are the children of your members and so they they started to to to agree because the problem is as I said so the the trade unions fix they have the idea that the apprenticeship has to be three years or three and a half year it's very difficult for example to model eyes apprenticeship so that you can say you know maybe people are able to to fulfill two or three of the models but not all or maybe people need not three years but four and a half year and then they could complete so if you are very strict and standardized then you are less flexible for different learning environments and and also learning curves and now they there's some change in the thinking because they also realized that the firm's rather go as I as I showed rather goal this time to the dual study programs and the point there is that trade unions have nothing to say and that in the dual study programs because there is a negotiation between the firm's and the university so all the other players are out the players the federal government is not involved the state governments are not involved the employers associations are not involved what the firms do is they provide the apprenticeship and the university provides the university program and they collaborate with Chambers of Commerce of industrial chambers that their students take an external examine and then get the qualification the certificate for the apprenticeship so the I think in the past ten years the trade unions now learned that at both ends they have to do something now coming to the school system and etc you are you are completely right I didn't talk much about that and that was kind of my start in the in the in the 1970s those who went to the so-called helped ruler to the main school as I showed you made up the majority of apprentices so they were like 80% so that was you know the idea was we have the main squirts the hub Shula they go to apprenticeships and we have the gymnasium these are the ones that go to university and in the 90 60 70 set worked and all the debates I mean that was the time when wages for skilled workers really increased and so there that looked from the outside that looked good but as I showed you this education expansion the firm's changed their their recruitment strategies so they they hired higher qualified young people and they could so because I have showed you that the apprenticeship get so they you know they had much more people to select from so they could really choose what they want and now they are you know more like on the they are so used to have at least intermediate educated school leavers and don't care anymore about the Lord's who will leave us now that the system somehow chain has changed in Germany because especially the firm's one must say are complaining about the poor performance of the German schools and they said you know we don't you can't live with this segregated school system anymore and now many of the federal states have introduced a school system that has a comprehensive path and and the gymnasium and we will so it's just the last two three years and we will see if st. everything change but the decrease this day so you still can leave as a lower school degree versus intermediate and versa I have another question you have said that in the 1970s the majority of the people going to the hub chula did this vocational training I would like to ask you was there a difference between gays and Shula which was wanted by the Socialists and the how Shula were the people coming from the Bassam shul getting where they're going to get more chief better than people coming from there up shul was there a difference yeah there's I mean the problem is that we have been so far so until five years ago we had only very few comprehensive schools come because only a two or three federal state German states introduced it yeah and then we have even in the in the comprehensive school system I mean that's very German we had different types so you had really integrated comprehensive school systems but we have also like and Lower Saxony that was not integrated you had the different tracks within the school so I mean that wasn't caught because I'm Trula but you still had a hope to attract really track so and by that it's very difficult to say whether but I mean you know when I in at conferences when the Germans are telling their their results on the comparison between exam Trula or six year to two years more primary education together etc releasing all my international colleagues they say you know the Germans are crazy about their school system because they can learn from outside and all the other systems prove that they are better than the German ones so they don't we would not even need these kind of comparison whether these students do better or not because we have all problems of selectivities whether the teachers are the same etc but as I said now the system is changing that has to do with firms but all of this demography the demography so in many rural areas we don't have enough students going to the different food types anymore and it's it's a very costly system to have so many different school types and to provide for each different food No two short questions the first is do firms have any advantages in having students best students in their firms I mean economic advantages given by a state or something like that and the second question is if I understood correctly students when they have done their degree they go in the firm they work for one year and many of them leave their firms because they don't like that job so our students helped in choosing their vocational area or not if yes so for the I mean the the firm's would get support to train low achieving students and some of the larger firms do it but for example taking Z months out of the seven seven thousand students in apprenticeship systems they have about 100 you won't qualify it as low achieving students and what they do is again they put them into a different class so they separate them from there are other firms that do not do that and they are very successful because I mean it is a different learning environment and some of the young people really you know we are frustrated in school and do very well in apprenticeship so sometimes it's not known before but yes firms do get get some help but of course I mean if they would train more one could argue and that they would need more help so that they would need social workers psychologists maybe to help them but I think that would be not a problem if they asked for because we have these kind of system where firms can ask for for money or for personnel but we stood by the employment agency and what we see that the money that is reserved for that is not asked for by the firm's so there would be a lot of resources still available the second is this vocational area yes I mean the students in school and the ninth starting in the 8th grade but more in the ninth and 10th grade they do have internships that are mandatory during the during the school year and they also have its a class called Career Guidance so they have one hour per week this kind of thing and the young people are know quite well what they like to become the problem is of course the match I mean if you would like to become a comic atronics and there is no place so you don't make it then you might be coming in this industrial mechanics or some other you know craft work and which you don't like that much but to so often you the young people don't have the choice if they really can enter what they like to enter because they are dependent on what the firms provide and who the firm's truth there's one issue that I think is very important and I would like to have some clarifications which is the issue of streaming and selection so our students so you talked about all these different streams in school tracks and different programs in the vocational system but the question is our students free to choose what track and what segment of the vocational system they want to take or are they forced to go to specific types of schools depending on their achievement at some point of their career so how does the allocation of the places work you also just mentioned the fact that the people may not find a place in the occupation they really want but how are these says are they searching for apprenticeships as unemployed people search for jobs or how does the allocation work so in school it's different by the German States so what is usually done is said at grade four or six depending whether the primary school goes on to the grade four or until grade six the teachers give a recommendation to which based on performance on grades to which school type the child should go and then they are further states that say the the prime say has a teacher and they are state said that to say that's only a recommendation and it's up to the choice of the parents and so one would think that you know if it would be up to the parents it's a more just system but it's not so what we observe is if the teacher I mean the teacher have a social bias no no doubt on that and also you know kids from lower classes have less support who have good grades but but we can observe if it is up to the parents then mainly higher class parents ignore the recommendation if their kid has a recommendation by the teacher for the hoped rule or they are sure they ignore it and stay put their kid into the gymnasium and if the if there is no right of the parents to decide but it's up to the teacher then we see that that is not that can't be the case and the other thing is that parents from lower classes are more you know convinced to send their child to the gymnasium if the teacher says that the child so it's it's really interesting and there is a debate in Germany right now whether we should have stayed right of the parents of Troop we should abolish or we should have tests and not the teachers recommendation but Centro tests at that stage and visitor this entrance into apprenticeship yes that works very much like the labor market so it's up to the students there's no I mean they can go of course to the employment agency like an unemployed person can go and buy that of course it depends very much on your parents how much support you get in writing applications and finding a job advert apprenticeship advertisement so it's come it's it's it's completely similar to finding a job well I enjoyed your lecture but I have a question regarding the effect of social mobility rather social immobility as you say say educational intergenerational immobility of the dual system currently I'm carrying out a piece of comparative research together with the Peter applause well then the Sandra behold comparing Italy and in Germany but it seems that the fad of parental class parental status group and the parental education is declining over across birth court both in Italy and in Germany and the graph you show that the picture you showed earlier regarding the increasing amount of people that attending university should go in this direction I mean so that there is a decline of this intergenerational educational inability is that true or maybe I'm wrong and my analysis are unsound yeah no I mean I'm not saying that there's no but of course we are not in the year 1950 anymore but in the Year 2015 and so it always depends on the expectation you have and if you look at this non-traditional student so having you know a vocational upper secondary education degree and how many really enter into university you would still say that is too little so it's not a really open society the other thing is that we have a lot of studies by your colleagues bottom Ulla and Hina Pollock which show I mean I showed you the the Pratt the young people who have a university entrance qualification but they go to a vocational training and these are mainly those young people from working having a working-class background making a Nabi tour and then going to an apprenticeship and not going to the University so the percentage of young people having an rb2 and going to a study program is much higher for the upper classes there you have very few that really enter an apprenticeship but to at least you know if your parents bearbank look you want to become a bunch of nowadays you more or less need an avi to us so the a spirit educational aspiration is yes if you look at school degrees it's it's Anita abitur but that is not transferred as much as for the higher classes into university degrees so for the German system it is very important at which point we look for mobility and how like general education degrees are used then for the next step of the educational career whether you go to university whether you go to university for Applied Science but there you go to apprenticeships and then in the apprenticeship system to which of the different segments so it's not so easy to say but yes of course there is some social mobility increasing mobility but being a very modern society it's astonishing how little that increases yes so two last questions yes I would like to ask you for you for your take I'm here okay sorry I would like to ask you your take on this hi as far as I know there are at the moment a lot of big firms and enterprises in Germany offering complete degrees deutsche bahn or Lufthansa so there are a lot of benefits for students who can just attend the schools have their bachelor or master and even a doctorate title in the enterprise so my question is now you mentioned before that also there are some firms and enterprises complaining about the quality of education so it will be this trend does be set in the future or is there really a problem in the training sector in Germany and in Europe thank you I mean he ever must say that also prognosis we have is that given the decreasing birth cohorts we are facing and it's really I mean it's really dramatic if you don't have immigration then we really have a problem in Germany and the next years because the court that go into the pension system are so much larger than the than the birth cohorts entering the labor market and also the pro kleh all the prognosis we have so far is that we do not may not lack university graduates but we will lack exactly the higher skilled middle and so that's why I think that's all the why the firm's tribe but the firm's tribe is the steward system because what we had in former days is yes they where some of the people that had a university degree entered apprenticeship and then might have done a university degree afterwards which is a kind of crazy because they did the upper secondary degree twice you would say but that was the way it was so they were lost for the firm's and they said well to a study program they they try to keep them in the firm exactly for this middle layer and and so I I think that it's not it's not only because if you look at the type of Industry we have be heavily have we heavily rely on this kind of skilled workers so I mean car industry does not work only with engineers that might be different for other countries but given the the types of industry we have sorry because there are two last questions here and he promised parla Italiano por todo Kumagai in Tedesco the conclusion yesterday I listened to a conference where it was said that social mobility is established in the first three years of life and they took the example of Scandinavian countries where a high-level at kindergarten guarantees a high cognitive correlation which has an impact on the person throughout the career say Germany what will be the impact of kindergarten guarantee seeing that the society is aging and in the next 10 years we will need a 500 thousand immigrants per year in order to remain competitive shall I translate into German dressing question and it's there's a obviously debate between sociologists and economists the economists are now moving to you know to the early child education and the sociologists say it's not fair to do that but a lot of problems will not be solved and for example for the German system what you see if you look at international studies like igloo in the up hurts in the in the primary education the German system is doing very well at that point so there is mobility so the primary schools are good to provide people from children from different backgrounds to provide a learning environment that they can reach higher levels of performance it's not that the the children from the lower classes catch up but what we see is that the gap they bring from their homes are decreasing in Germany and then when it comes to secondary school then it goes up so if the only you know put effort into the kindergarten but would so that the problem is more at the upper end of the education of Korea because then you can make things worse and everything you implemented and early in the early life if if the later life is still depending on your parents as I said for example the example is if the parents have the right to choose so then you have two very different educational decisions and if they are very heavily depending on social class then and we do see that the the parents from lower classes underestimate the ability of their children so even so you lift them up in the kindergarten it is good so I'm not complaining I I think it's a good thing to do that but of course the ability and the knowledge has to be acknowledged by the the social environment and and so I think the education system still has a huge impact and what's happened in later life is about the graphic you showed in the relation between parents and the greater graduating levels of parents and children and Italy did much better than Germany so would you quickly say Italian school is better than German school in this way I mean here it's only you know if it's better I mean here it's not not but you don't see is whether the competence is achieved by the children are higher or lower but what it's telling year is that you could say that in terms of performance in terms of reading our numeracy Italy is less socially stratified than the German system because I mean you are at least the first rank but if you look at this graph you lose it by the education system so not all the you know the the mobility in terms of of competencies are translated into into degrees that may be because in Italy we don't you know we don't find a job always compared to our abilities so maybe it's better to study in Italy and work in Germany maybe I don't know I'm asking you if you have to choose yeah about degree so I think one of the problem here is that you really have this more like having university degree or not and if you come from a lower class but still have high competencies at age 15 not every parents can from the lower classes can manage to send the child in so that it's a public university system but at that time you know you don't don't own that what you would earn if you work so you would still think it's you have a good education system in terms of social mobility of competencies I mean we would have to look what it means in terms of level of competencies but you lose it somehow when it gets to transfer the competencies into educational degrees thank you thank you very much hey kiss all gasp all
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