Status: 01/24/2023 08:52 a.m
A new study shows that high school graduates are increasingly opting for an apprenticeship. As a result, secondary school students and young people without a school-leaving certificate are often left behind: Fewer and fewer make the leap into an apprenticeship.
High school graduates are increasingly striving for apprenticeships. As a consequence, it is becoming increasingly difficult for secondary school students to find an apprenticeship. This is the result of a study commissioned by the Bertelsmann Foundation.
The proportion of school leavers with a university entrance qualification who begin dual or school-based training has risen from 35 percent to 47.4 percent within ten years. Before the corona pandemic in 2019, the proportion was even slightly higher (48.5 percent).
According to the author of the study, Dieter Dohmen, there can be no question of a lack of attractiveness of vocational training for high school graduates. The director of the Research Institute for Educational and Social Economics (FiBS), which carried out the study on behalf of the Bertelsmann Foundation, explained that they were by no means too little interested in vocational training.
Significantly fewer secondary school students start their training
According to the study, the transition rates for school leavers with an intermediate school certificate, such as those from the Realschule, have remained relatively stable at around 80 percent over the past 15 years. On the other hand, young people with a secondary school leaving certificate are finding it increasingly difficult to get an apprenticeship, as the saying goes. Among them, the proportion of those who started vocational training fell by a fifth between 2011 and 2021.
For young people without a school-leaving certificate, the already difficult situation has recently worsened: According to the study, the transition rate was 30 percent in 2021. In the past 15 years, it has fluctuated around 35 percent. The number of 15 to 24-year-olds who are neither in training nor in school or in a job increased significantly between 2019 and 2021 from 492,000 to around 630,000
Study author Dohmen described the developments in this area as “dramatic”. “Far too many young people get nothing on the training market or drop out of the system altogether. We have to significantly increase the integration ability of the training system again,” explained the director of the FiBS.
DGB complains about “selection of the best”
“It just doesn’t go together when employers complain about a lack of applicants on the one hand, but on the other hand often just select the best. Young people with a secondary school certificate also need opportunities for an apprenticeship,” said deputy DGB chairwoman Elke Hannack of the dpa news agency. There is enormous potential for more training and thus for alleviating the shortage of skilled workers.
“As a society, we cannot afford to let this potential lie idle,” she said. According to the study, the number of apprenticeships has fallen in a long-term comparison: while the last peak in 2007 was a good 844,000 people in apprenticeships, the number in 2021 was 706,000. The corona pandemic meant a cut here, in the years before that the number had increased slightly in the meantime.
criticism of the draft law
According to estimates by the Bertelsmann Foundation, despite thousands of unfilled training places, it is becoming increasingly difficult, especially for young people with a low level of schooling, to find a training place. Increasing qualification requirements and regional imbalances played a role here. The corona crisis also made it difficult for many young people to start their careers because there were no internships or other orientation offers.
The situation is particularly difficult for these young people. Bertelsmann training expert Clemens Wieland therefore advocated a training guarantee. “We need a training guarantee that really gives every young person a training opportunity and that also includes individual guidance and support in order to achieve the degree,” he explained. The draft law presented by the government for a training guarantee is insufficient and “clearly falls short”.