In recent years, VET in its dual organization model has attracted extraordinary interest worldwide (Markowitsch and Wittig, 2020). The resistance of countries such as Germany and Switzerland to the 2008 financial crisis placed their dual apprenticeship model at the center of international debates, making it a kind of “miracle recipe” that would not only provide skilled workers, but also help to control youth unemployment. The dual model is often referred to as an “anti-unemployment recipe” that could be transposed from Switzerland or Germany to other countries to solve the problem of youth unemployment (Jäger et alii 2016, Gessler 2019), including Spain (Cámara de Comercio de España, 2015; Carrasco et al. 2021).

But beyond these exciting declarations and glittering promises, we must ask what the true impact of the dual model on youth unemployment is. More precisely, the questions we would like to address in our contribution are the following:

-          To what extent is it possible to establish a direct causal relationship between the development of the dual model and low youth unemployment?

-          To what extent can the dual model actually be considered as a form of organization of VET that ensures a high level of integration of those who would otherwise be at risk of becoming unemployed?

-          To what extent, according to given socio-economic conditions, school-based forms of VET are able to ensure the integration of young people in upper secondary education.

The questions asked here are complex and require nuanced responses (Stolz Gonon 2012). If we compare national data on youth unemployment and participation in dual-track programmes, we can see a certain correlation. However, further analysis requires caution in interpreting this correlation, as there are many factors influencing the youth unemployment rate (national economic situation, availability of full-time schools at upper secondary level, staying in the family etc.). (Marhuenda-Fluixá, 2018; Wolter et alii, 2018, p. 116)

At the same time, the dual model relies heavily on the participation of companies, which are more concerned with identifying motivated young people with strong profiles for training than with responding to social policy issues. Considering this aspect, it is questionable whether dual model is a better instrument to integrate as many young people as possible and in particular also young people with weaker profiles then full-time schools. (Imdorf 2016, Marhuenda 2019)

To better understand this apparent paradox, we will analyse in depth the integrative scope of VET in Switzerland and Spain. Switzerland is a country with a long tradition of the dual model and is currently the European country with the highest rate of young people in this type of training and at the same time it is among the countries with the lowest youth unemployment rates (Wettstein, Schmid, Gonon 2014). Spain is a country with a vocational training system organized around full-time schools, but for a decade now initiatives to develop dual VET have been taking place in order to react, officially, to the high rate of young unemployment (Martìnez-Morales & Marhuenda 2020, Marhuenda 2019). 

It will therefore be interesting to ask whether, on the one hand, the Swiss dual apprenticeship model appears to be an effective tool for the integration of young people into upper secondary education and whether, on the other hand, data of the laste decade about VET in Spain suggest that the already well established full-time vocational schools have a hight capacity to integrate even without being dual. Two issues deserve our attention here: the contrast between dual and non-dual VET, and the labor market and active employment policies, including specific form of apprenticeship contracts.

In our presentation, we will base on an analysis of the literature available on this subject in Switzerland and in Spain. (For Switzerland, see in particular: Imdorf 2016, Meyer 2018, Bonoli L. 2021, Bonoli G. & Emmenegger 2020, Bolli et alii 2015. For Spain see in particular: Martínez-Morales & Marhuenda 2020, Marhuenda 2019, Martínez-Morales and Marhuenda 2022).

Our presentation will allow us to temper the enthusiasm around the integrative capacity of the dual model. Our analysis shows that for the dual system to work properly, it is essential that training companies are able to select young apprentices themselves, from among motivated young people with relatively strong academic profiles. The demands of companies for strong profiles mean that young people with weak profiles are at great risk of not finding an apprenticeship place. The situation in Switzerland shows this very clearly. Every year about 12% of young people do not find an apprenticeship place after leaving the lower secondary education and have to wait a year in transitional solutions before starting a vocational training (Meyer 2018). And, at the same time, recent studies show how the measures adopted to improve the inclusiveness of the Swiss system are limited to measures external to the system, which try to improve the profiles of young people so that they can find an apprenticeship place, but without touching the selective structure of the system (Bonoli G. & Emmenegger 2020). The conclusions are similar also for Spain. Even if the dual model is younger and involves a smaller number of young people, the first experiences show a clear tendency of this model to privilege the strongest profiles and to exclude the weakest ones, and this despite the initial intentions of these initiatives which aimed at a better integration of boosting employability of youth at risk of exclusion (Vila and Chisvert 2018). Furthermore, data show that the school-based VET has increased its popularity and attractiveness in the past decade, even without the expansion of the dual modality (Martínez-Morales and Marhuenda-Fluixá 2020, 2022).

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