Bulgaria has been suffering from decades-long brain drain and skills loss due to high emigration rates of the skilled and highly-skilled labour force (Stoilova 2018). Despite a long tradition of school-based Vocational Education and Training (VET) and a high proportion of young people in VET (52% in 2021), decreasing medium-level technical skills in the Bulgarian labour market has been forecast (Simeonova-Ganeva et al. 2022; Cedefop 2023). The government's current strategic interest “Modernisation of VET” aims to improve skills formation through VET via modernised curricula and apprenticeships.

Dual VET in Bulgaria was legally introduced in 2015. A decade ago, the legislation changes have triggered a 'natural experiment' by attracting the interest of three loosly coupled VET-policy transfer initiatives from Germany, Switzerland and Austria:

(1) In 2015, the German-Bulgarian Chamber of Industry and Commerce (AHK Bulgaria) has launched elements of a dual vocational training system, amongst others in the food industry, in the production of industrial minerals and in the textile industry. The program involved advising companies operating in Bulgaria willing to commence dual vocational training and initiate basic pilot training courses until 2018. The Plovdiv office of the Chamber, with its regional network of over 70 companies, was especially active in supporting the local vocational school for electrical engineering in its search for new partner companies for the dual training of students.

(2) The Swiss government funded project DOMINO (2015-2019) offert support to create a successful model and to build capacity for implementation of the dual education in Bulgaria. The Bulgarian-Swiss Chamber of Commerce acted as intermediary to the Bulgarian ministries. As of the 2018 academic year, 32 vocational schools in 19 cities across the country, together with more than 170 partner companies, were training 1,600 apprentices in 12 occupations (e.g. in mechanical engineering, milk production, tourism).

(3) The Austrian Federal Economic Chamber and its foreign trade organization ADVANTAGE AUSTRIA launched a pilot project called “Dual Education in Bulgaria” in order to create sustainable “business-education” cooperations at regional and local levels. Starting with the school year 2015/16, participating students from 6 vocational schools (mechatronics) in 5 regions received practical training in cooperation with Austrian companies.

It is unclear which of these three ‘national’ VET-export initiatives has proven most sustainable. The transfer of German, Swiss or Austrian dual apprenticeship models is recognised in international TVET research in German-speaking countries. A distinction can be made between two camps (Eckelt, 2018): Those who consider transfer to be possible in principle and address the conditions of successful transfer (Pilz, 2017) – explicitly for Germany (Euler, 2013), Austria (Langthaler, 2015) and Switzerland (Strahm, Geiger, Oertle & Swars, 2016); and those who assume the fundamental impossibility of transfer (e.g. Münk, 2017). Our study aims at analysing which transfer approach has proven most (or least) impactful in the long-term and why, and what particular problems have been encountered (Pilz 2016).

Theoretically, we embedd our research question in sociological neo-institutionalism and conceptualise the ‘dual apprenticeship’ (or the narratives behind it, such as low youth unemployment, better skills match, increased training quality) as a myth. Due to international pressure, this myth is processed in discourses at the European level. International actors use soft power, including financial incentives, to trigger initial reform efforts in countries, which in turn through mimesis, encourage the latter to actively demand the same reforms themselves (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). In the target country, a de-/re-contextualised version of ‘dual apprenticeship’ is then introduced that is only remotely related to the original model. At the same time, the myth is maintained in national discourses. Meanwhile, local practice often remains the same (talk vs. action, or organisational 'decoupling').

To answer the research question empirically, data on the three mentionned national VET export processes to Bulgaria will be collected and analysed as part of the research project Progressing Promising Skills to Work in Bulgaria (Horizon Europe Grant Agreement: Project 101183817 — ProSkills2Work). Using a multiple case study design (Yin, 2014), data on the three cases of international VET policy transfer are collected through expert interviews with relevant German, Swiss and Austrian stakeholders of dual VET in Bulgaria, as well as with diverse Bulgarian stakeholders (directors and teachers in VET schools; employers and instructors of training companies; representatives of industrial associations; district-level regional councils; national ministries). This interview data, approx. 30 interviews in total, will be complemented by the selection of policy documents which cover the development and implementation of (dual) VET in Bulgaria, as well as its assessment by the main stakeholders. Statistical data on dual-VET training is hardly available as national VET statistics does not yet provide differentiated information on VET-programs which include company-based training. Analytical strategies of data analysis will include thematic content analysis. The data in Germany, Switzerland and Austria will be collected in April and July 2025, data collection in Bulgaria starts in May.

Preliminary assessments of the ongoing dual-VET reform in Bulgaria have indicated major challenges such as underfinancing, poor cooperation with the business sector and dual VET provision, increasing drop-out rates and lack of a coherent system to assess the quality of VET, pointing to a need of professionalisation of VET-teachers/trainers (CEDEFOP, 2018). Against the backdrop of these challenges it is crucial to better understand if and how company-based VET could be a solution to reduce the skill shortage in order to inform policy-makers in the skills formation system. Bulgaria currently lacks an effective national concept and strategy for VET which has remained very regionalised so far. Thus, our research outcomes will critically inform the impetus for “Modernisation of VET” (the introduction of modernised curricula and apprenticeship programmes) already on the agenda of the Bulgarian government. At the conference, preliminary findings from the expert interviews will be presented and discussed. The Bulgarian experience with European VET-policy import can be instructive for the Western Balkan countries, where similar reforms are currently being initiated.

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