This article sets out to share the experience of a Cork Education and Training Board (CETB) Further Education and Training (FET) Guidance Counsellor on collaborating with FET Literacy and Apprenticeship Services colleagues to support young male early school leavers who had achieved less than the required five passes in their Junior Certificate to…

While the literature in skill formation systems has paid considerable attention to inter-variation between types of national skill formation systems and intra-variation among individual types as in the case of collective skill formation systems, less is known about the role of the European Union in establishing a European model of skill formation.…

Purpose: Set within the context of International Financial Services (IFS), this research aims to considers the demographic profile of IFS apprenticeship candidates in relation to gender equality and social mobility in Ireland. This study also offers valuable insights as to the gendered nature of these "new" apprenticeships and examine…

Purpose: To examine the perspective of third-level university students in the context of the value proposition of construction apprenticeships in Ireland. Design/methodology/approach: The research uses a qualitative method, conducting semi-structured interviews with 20 third-level university students enrolled on a Bachelor of Science (Honours)…

This resource has been developed for pre-apprenticeship providers who wish to develop and enhance their programme to ensure that young people are equipped with the key skills they need for an apprenticeship and their future career. This resource is divided into the following sections: (1) Transversal and learn to learn skills; (2) Basic skills;…

This report shares data in the following categories as they relate to graduates in Ontario's economy: (1) Matching skills to employer needs: pathways, entrepreneurship, and innovation; (2) Ontario's college graduate advantage compared to the U.S.; (3) Ontario's post-secondary graduates in the world economy; (4) Educational attainment and…

Purpose: This paper explores the implications for higher education of the rapid development in technology used by the manufacturing sector. Higher education programmes change or new courses are introduced in attempts to match labour market demands. However, the pace of change in the manufacturing industry challenges the authors to reconceive how…

Apprenticeships for adults are one of the policy solutions to the need for supporting adults willing to train, while broadening the skills base of the working population across Europe. According to Cedefop estimates, there are around 128 million adults with potential for upskilling or reskilling in the European Union (EU). EU Member States have…

Concise, clear and comprehensive snapshots of vocational education and training systems in EU, Iceland and Norway: this is what the Cedefop Spotlight on VET series offers. Building on individual country Spotlights, this publication provides an overview of VET systems with their distinctive qualities, such as main accession and progression routes…

This report explores best practice in the design and delivery of pre-apprenticeship programmes across Europe. For the purposes of this project, pre-apprenticeship programmes are defined as programmes targeted at young people aged 16-24, where at least one of the stated aims is progression to an apprenticeship. Across Europe, some programmes are…

This handbook, first published in 2014, aims at helping policy makers and social partners understand some of the ways in which learning in the workplace can be encouraged and how its quality can be improved. It is also intended to help them understand some of the ways that such learning can be organised in a structured manner so that it benefits…

The combination of work and study has been hailed as crucial to ensure that youth develop the skills required on the labour market so that transitions from school to work are shorter and smoother. This paper fills an important gap in availability of internationally-comparable data. Using the 2012 Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), it draws a…

Research tells us much about the effects of primary and lower-secondary schooling on skills inequality, but we know less about the impact of the next stage of education. This article uses a differences-in-differences analysis of data on literacy and numeracy skills in PISA 2000 and SAS 2011/12 to assess the contribution of upper-secondary…

This paper looks at the importance of mechanisms that give formal recognition to vocational skills acquired through work-based learning and how such mechanisms might be developed. It describes how skill recognition can benefit individuals, employers and society as a whole, and identifies in which contexts skill recognition has the highest…

This paper provides an overview of VET (vocational education and training) in Ireland. In Ireland, the main providers of VET are the national Training and Employment Authority (FAS--a non-commercial semi-State body, part of the public sector) and vocational education committees (VECs--public sector bodies at county level responsible for vocational…