The failure to fill apprenticeships has to with the outdated apprenticeship model. Switzerland is lumbered with a historically split educational system:
Gymnasium: Funded by the Kanton, teachers are well paid and jealously protect their turf -aversion to anything that smacks of a vocational training.
Sekundarschule: Funded by the local Gemeinde. Teachers are paid less and generally are less well academically qualified; though the pedagogic challenges are probably higher. Have traditionally been very vocationally orientated.
This is a big problem these days as kids need time to develop at differant speeds and are too young to make decisions about what kind of career they should pursue.
Mittelschulen: DMS, FMS etc. these are growing in importance as the old idea of going into an apprentice at 15/16 is clearly unsuited to many kids.
Unfortunately the Mittelschulen are limited in the variety of courses.
The glamour (to a teenagers mind such as with a travel agency) apprenticeships are highly unlikely to be assigned on the basis of open competition. Some apprenticeships are simply not inviting enough -perception that the work will be boring with little chance advancement. Some are too demanding and the supply of good candidates is drying up
The 2nd year at Sek concentrates on the students making contact with local businesses- positive networking? or the negative reinforcement of connections?
May I ask you to elaborate why the apprenticeship system is outdated? You compare the funding of gymnasium vs. sekundarschule. Vocational schools are fundet by the canton, überbetriebliche kurse (ÜK) are usually funded by the trade and crafts association.
This has been the same problems for decades, not just these days. Nowadays, with the Mittelschulen and expecially the Berufmatur, there are a lot of options if you chose the wrong profession at 16.
Especially the big companies invest a lot of ressources to recruit the best available people for their open apprenticeship positions so there really is a competition for these apprenticeships, but the competition is between the companys as a lot of them struggle to find good kids.
I don't share your concern about the "schnupperlehre" and see it as a form of positive networking. Especially for small crafts enterprises, getting to know and asses a candidate for an apprenticeship is very important. If they choose poorly, a significant amount of their workforce is bound in supervising the apprentician.
The UK and NZ have suffered from neglecting apprenticeships and are now trying to rectify this.
Anecdote: I know of two Swiss families who returned from NZ so that their kids could get a Swiss apprenticeship -the system has worked well in the past. I appreciate the low level of youth unemployment -it is actually difficult to fall through the cracks here.
My beef is really related to the whole system;
selection at age 11 for gymi ............(unforgiveable in 2018)
a vocational/academic divide that results in lots of jobs for expats
Apprenticeships starting at 15 that characterises the channeling of kids and can be a huge demotivator.
With manufacturing gone off-shore and the technical demands of "trades" increasing, there is a big argument for doing away with the 6 year gymi and improving some of the Sek courses - here the different background/paymaster of the teachers is a real hurdle to change. The Mittelchulen/ 4 year Gymis could then work together with apprenticeship schemes at an age better suited to students.
The fail/pass nature of the Matura results in incredible compromises being made in the level reached, and each school making it's own decisions......
The curricula used to have content that was impossible to deliver (in my experience, with exception of the "Schwerpunktfach"). The new competencies read like a wish list rather than something the majority of students will reach.
KiwiSteve, I read your assessment with interest and assigned credibility given your background. At later stage this topic would come to forefront in my family as well.
Now in the face of some challenges, I felt you were not able to defend your original view point . Classifying your beef with apprenticeship and Swiss education system as a rant, now that makes sense to me.
But the diagram shows rather a lot of channels........
The channeling is not just just the structure - students being told they are not good enough for gymi is commonplace as is teachers making comments, that border on the unprofessional, about student's character/abilities/future.
Kurzzeit Gymi entrance at 14 was in most Kantons brought in because of the glaring problems of selection at 11 (In Aargau all gymi entrance is at 14 ?).It is a plaster solution.
Caution, with every kind of percentage you want to ask what the base is.
Unemployment ratios are based on the number of people in the workforce, or in a particular (age) group of the workforce. People in a full-time education like pupils and students aren't part of the workforce.
So if 70% of the young are in in a gymi/university education, the workforce of that age group encompasses (at most) the remaining 30%, that's roughly the case in Italy. If 10% of the age group are without job, the unemployment rate is 33%. However if 30% of the age group are in the gymi/uni, the same 10% unemployed of the age group result in an unemployment rate of roughly 14%.
Either way, you're right in that unemployment rate of all kinds are unusually low here.
Not really, it's existed for ages, for at least 50 years in the case of Canton Thurgau. I'm positive the same or very similar applies to the other Cantons.
Sorry mate, but you really should learn more about the education system.
Kantonsschule Enge introduced the Kurzzeitgymnasium in the '70ies. I don't know the details but I simply can't see how these changes didn't happen all over the Canton, albeit perhaps with a few years difference. Zürich being what it is then already, the other Cantons can't have been too far behind (if at all).
ETA
Sorry, I misread. I think there are about a dozen Cantons with a Langzeitgymnasium. Basically, Zürich plus some Catholic Cantons. I'll look them up.
ETA2
Should be 11 Cantons with a Langzeitgymnasium, here are ten of them: AI, GL, GR, LU, NW, OW, UR, SG, ZG, ZH. All offer the 4year version as well.
OK, we are going to get lost in the complexity of the Swiss system as even the german speaking Kantons cannot agree on how to do things. I think the french speaking attitude to the Matura is different again. The poor Ticinese don't seem to get a say.
I still feel my comments are valid. Every country has problems with its education system -the kids still manage to survive
For the Matura, children are studying a huge array of subjects, not just three or four and they can't drop maths or German so they have to be pretty good across the board.
Whilst I am unable to find out how many children in Ch attain a 5 or higher marks in their Matura, many children achieve an a or a* in their A levels.
More than one in four A-levels were awarded an A or A* this year - the highest proportion for six years, national figures show. In total, 26.4 per cent of UK entries were given one of the two top grades, according to data published by the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ).
And whilst the take up of A levels varies massively depending on area, socio-economic group etc. more children in UK do A levels than children in CH take the Matura.
Any choice is made at 15, before it's mostly egalitarian. Kind of taking the best from the german system without discounting the more latin principle that children should be equal. Considering that nowadays choices are reversible by adding 1 year after high school/apprenticeship I think it's a good equilibrium. I agree that before 15 it doesn't make sense to select students, because children are still undergoing serious development.
But it doesn't follow that they are somehow easier. Students work damn hard for those grades: exams are intensive and the content massive. It may be three or four subjects but they aren't "just" anything. But we digress.
Ok it does show a lot of channels, but do you realise the channels are between the degrees and mostly independent from the chosen field?
Basically you can do an apprenticeship as cook, discover or develop your talent for math an chemistry, go to berufmatura and university of applied sciences or via passarelle to university.