After several decades with little or no interest in apprenticeship as an alternative to upper secondary vocational education (Lundahl 1998), the first attempts to re-introduce apprenticeship were made during the 1990’s. Characteristic for these was that they were embedded in school-based VET, offering an extended period of work-based learning for potential drop-outs or as individualized programmes. The political motive relates to studies showing that youth with incomplete upper secondary education were significantly more often unemployed than was the case for those who had completed a programme (Olofsson). However, an informal apprenticeship has existed for several decades, especially in vocational areas related to construction and electricity. In these cases, apprenticeship is regarded as a necessary complement to the 3-year school-based VET-programmes. The respective training boards have established these requirements. In order to become what is labelled as “fully qualified” (in terms of fully paid), apprenticeship adds another three years to upper secondary education (Berglund 2009).

Apprenticeship in connection to and as an alternative track for upper secondary vocational programmes was implemented in Sweden as a 3-year probation in 2008. The schools are responsible for the designing and organisation of upper secondary apprenticeship but there are two central conditions: firstly that minimum half of the programme must be realized in a workplace, and secondly that the same objectives apply for the programmes, be they given in the form of school based VET or as apprenticeship. This paper is based on a study of pedagogical aspects of apprenticeship during the second and third year of the probation (Berglund & Lindberg 2012). Here we focus on VET-teachers’ work within the apprenticeship form of upper secondary vocational education. The main issue of our paper is to illuminate the consequences and challenges for VET-teachers’ work within upper secondary apprenticeship. 

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