EU-DualS for Students and Trainees

The big question when you are 15 to 16 years old: which work would I like to learn for my life after school?, could maybe find a good answer thanks to EU-DualS. While 4 to 5 out of 10 young people take their time for an answer until they are 18 or 19 years old, by continuing school until the college diploma, 5 to 6 don’t achieve college levels and are directly confronted with the choice between a professional school or a practical training in a company as apprentice. Today only very few choose the latter, also because you are looked at as if you were – let’s say – “the looser” if you end school at 16 and start to learn practically a job in a company: somebody that is “not well educated (at school)”.

That is due to the fact, that nowadays learning as apprentice in many countries is not well accompanied by theoretical and school elements, in the companies normally the boss or colleagues are not prepared to train you, nor do they act with the purpose of and necessary patience in training you. Often with an apprenticeship contract you are simply less paid than other colleagues, but you have to do the same work, often without explanations, helping you to understand what you are doing and how things function really.

Finally, once you finish the apprenticeship, you don’t get always a formally recognised title as a professional, but you can only talk about that you have experience. And there is no organised and recognised way to continue studies or specialise more in a particular field.

Instead in the German “Dual System” doing an apprenticeship has the following positive features:

– in the company is a certified tutor or crafts master that is prepared in training you

– you go 1-2 days a week to school, or also sometimes for 2-3 weeks in a row

– at the end of the apprenticeship you do an exam (at a Business support organisation, like an entrepreneurs’ association, the crafts’ or commerce and industry chambers) and obtain a formally recognised title that allows you:

  1. a) in many cases to continue directly with Technical High School studies, e.g. as engineer, or
  2. b) to spend this title on the job market looking for a job in another company, in another region or country, or even in a related but different sector.

 

Compared to a professional school a “Dual System” apprentice has also advantages:

– first of all, you have an apprenticeship contract, what means you are paid while you are learning, unlike other pupils sitting in school and depending fully from their parents.

– secondly, you learn actively and with “live-experience” a job, while others do so only theoretically and have to fine-tune their know-how later on when they start to work in companies, being then easily criticised by colleagues and bosses.

– finally, the final exams you do are linked to what you are practically able to do as a professional, and not to other school curricula subjects, maybe far from what you practically learned, or even far from everyday life in general.

And we should add also: nowadays in Germany, many skilled workers in industry – with a Dual System apprenticeship done before – earn more than people after their university degrees in economical, humanistic, social or cultural studies. And many students after university must then do anyway practical experience during traineeships or internships, often not or very badly paid, sometimes far beyond the age of 25. In the meanwhile, the vast majority of them continues to live at their parent’s place, and lack independency to determine their own lives.

If you want to know more about the benefits of EU-DualS for students and trainees, look at the video below: