Issues of governing and control in vocational education and training (VET) systems – established old and newly developing apprenticeship systems compared

The contribution builds on previous analyses of problems in vocational education and training (VET) governance in different countries, with established dual apprenticeship systems (Austria, Germany) and newly emerging apprenticeship systems (Italy, Hungary). On background of qualitative analyses of key problems in the selected countries the main governance problems were identified and compared. A common ground for all cases is the defense or establishment of a collective skill formation systems build around the model of dual apprenticeship that has become a main proposal in international policy making. This presentation takes a deeper look at the issues of control in the particularly complex governance systems of dual apprenticeship. The theoretical perspective of historical institutionalism as well as much empirical research about the political attempts of transfer of dual apprenticeship systems has emphasized the multitude of included actors with different, and to some part conflicting, interests that are consequently in volved in much activity of negotiation and conflict resolution. We expect that the politics of control in the current wave of the Global Educational Reform Movement (GERM) cannot be easily established in collective skill formation systems. Moreover, the drive towards privatization can only partly affect this kind of system. On the one hand training enterprises are main private actors; on the other hand, collective skill formation can only work effectively if it is embedded in corporatist structures of interest and conflict resolution supported by the state. So, the political attempts toward the international and European spread of the dual apprenticeship system can be seen to some part as an attempt towards privatization by embedding the enterprise sector in the skills formation system; however, because of its collective aspect, privatization can only be limited. Basically, we use our previous analyses of governance problems, mainly case studies on national level, to reflect on the limits of establishing the newly emerging practices of control. So, we give mainly a new focused interpretation of our material. Main conclusions are that the relation of governing and control works precariously in all cases; in two of the cases (Germany, Hungary) strongly established mechanisms of (central) control turn out as counterproductive, as the practices and initiative of local actors are damaged by too much control; in the other two cases (Austria, Italy) the attempts to establish stronger political control over the development of the system have failed due to the complexity of the governing structures that eluded the attempts of establishing control.