The Cultural Foundations of VET and the European Qualifications Framework : a comparison of Germany and Britain

Abstract

In a 'system' perspective, VET can take different shapes. Besides the apprenticeship system, school-based forms of vocational learning, such as 'vocational grammar schools' in France, 'vocational colleges' in Germany or further education colleges in Britain, represent more or less traditional courses and qualifications which are normally institution-based, shaped by state influence and more or less clearly didactically steered pedagogical arrangements. There are, however, differences when it comes to formally linking up these traditional structures with general or higher education. It also seems that countries differ in terms of their VET systems and traditions, especially with respect to the relationship between full-time VET and company-based training, but also, when it comes to Europe, in terms of their adaptability to the overarching European VET policy ideas. One of these ideas is the conceptualisation of National Qualifications Frameworks, linked with notions of "Lifelong Learning". In its White Paper on Growth, Competitiveness and Employment (European Commission 1993), the European Commission pointed out that Lifelong Learning should become "the overall objective to which the national educational communities can make their own contributions". Two years later, in the White Paper on Teaching and Training - Towards the Learning Society (European Commission 1995), the concept of Lifelong Learning became associated with the idea of a 'personal skills card' for every European citizen which would document the acquisition of new knowledge both in formal and informal learning environments. These new concepts imply that the bordersbetween different sectors within the educational and/or training system, including higher and further education, should become permeable and the European Qualifications Framework (EQF), emerging from the so-called "Lisbon-Brugge-Copenhagen Process", repeats the underlying principles of a policy which challenges each of the member countries in a specific way.