The relative position and role of vocational education and higher education varies across different education systems. Although it is difficult to avoid oversimplification, it might be argued that vocational education in the UK context in most respects plays second fiddle to higher education. The lack of “parity of esteem” has been analysed and bemoaned by many observers, and analysis has highlighted the reasons and implications of a clear difference in terms of status of the two educational sectors, including distinct differences between different parts of the UK (cf. James Relly, 2021). Germany, on the other hand, represents a system in which vocational and higher education have co-existed as equally strong parts of the overall transition of young people from school to the world of work. Evidence for this configuration provides the strong political consensus around the dual system of vocational training and participation pattern that show a significant of overlap between the two systems (cf. Ertl, 2021). This paper will argue that these differences in the relationship between, and the relative position of vocational and higher education to each other determines to a large extent the ways in which both sectors develop “hybrid” education and training provision (cf. Hayward et al., 2021). This term refers to provision that combines content, concepts and approaches traditionally located in one of the two sectors. It is argued that it is particularly the status ascribed to vocational education that determines in what ways in which vocational knowledge and skills are conceived in higher education led programmes which include phases of work-based learning. In this way the paper discusses at first the specific provision of dual study programmes, their structural approaches and their aspiration to develop - based on a synchronic provision of practical training in enterprises and theoretical learning at higher education institutions. - A vocational-higher education graduate equipped with a specific self-concept combines academic as well as vocational standards, values and working behaviours. Finally, the paper discusses alternative hybrid provision structures and approaches recently introduced in Germany. The different provisions and their defined aims are considered in the light of the status ascribed to vocational education and the way in which vocational knowledge and skills are related to academic knowledge in these programmes.

James Relly, S. (2021): The political rhetoric of parity of esteem, in: Oxford Review of Education, (47/4), 513-528. Ertl, H. (2021): Bildungssysteme im Vergleich: Die britische Sicht auf die deutsche Berufsbildung im Zeitverlauf, in: Bellmann et al. (eds.): Schlüsselthemen der beruflichen Bildung in Deutschland. Ein historischer Überblick zu wichtigen Debatten und zentralen Forschungsfeldern (Bonn: BIBB), 384-398. Hayward, G., Kartarzi, E., Ertl, H., Hölscher, M. (2021): Degrees of Success: The Transitions from Vocational to Higher Education (Bingley: Emerald Publishing).