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Apprenticeship in the British ‘Training Market’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2020

Paul Ryan  and
Lorna Unwin
Paul Ryan*
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge, King's CollegeCambridgeCB2 1ST
Lorna Unwin*
Affiliation:
University of Leicester Centre for Labour Market Studies, 7 Salisbury Rd LeicesterLE1 7QR
*
e-mail pr23@econ.cam.ac.uk
e-mail l.unwin@le.ac.uk
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Abstract

British apprenticeship, now dependent on the Modern Apprenticeship programme, is compared in this paper to both German apprenticeship and its national predecessor, Youth Training. Modern Apprenticeship shares many of the attributes of Youth Training, and shows some improvement in terms of skills produced. However, British apprenticeship performs poorly, in terms of rates of qualification and completion, as well as in breadth and depth of training, relative to its German counterpart, despite the provision by Modern Apprenticeship of substantial government financial support. The fact that MA resembles YT more than German apprenticeship reflects continuing institutional differences between the two countries, notably the limitations of the training quasi-market in which both YT and MA have operated. The prospects for MA to flourish, let alone perform the educational role that the government envisages for it, are bleak in the absence of institutional development along different lines.

Type
Research Article
Information
National Institute Economic Review , Volume 178 , October 2001 , pp. 99 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 National Institute of Economic and Social Research

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Footnotes

∗

We thank officials of the Department for Education and Skills, LSCs and further education colleges for helpful discussions, the DfES and ONS for access to unpublished data, and S.J.Prais for suggestions and encouragement. The views expressed in this paper may well diverge from those of the DfES.

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