Competence development through workplace learning: the case of the French Vocational Baccalaureat from vocational lycees and the Maisons Familiales Rurales

The creation of the vocational baccalaureat track in 1985 contributed to a main innovation in the French initial secondary education system. In its objective and in its innovative way of learning combining sandwich courses (work and school places learning), this program offer students who were at school in a failure situation a path for continuing their studies or a springboard to jump into a new career or professional plan. This diploma has been implemented in different ways: through student status or in apprenticeships, and through the responsibility of the Ministry of Education in vocational high schools but also, under the responsibility of the Ministry of Agriculture like in the Maisons Familiales Rurales (MFR). First, this paper will present the institutional framework: what is the Vocational Baccalaureat (VETBac) diploma, its roles and purposes? And as the national French system of education from the Ministry of education has been the subjects of number of articles in European VET reviews (Gendron, 2005), it will be presented more in details the MFR system less known and its philosophy. The second part, briefly developed8 here, will give some views of the convergence and divergence of the conditions of competence development of vocational baccalaureat trainees or students with a workplace learning focus in those two previous organizations.

Published abstract.

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