The current state of the challenges for VET in Denmark

In all Nordic countries the systems of vocational education face a double challenge. They are required to offer double qualifications, which give access not only to skilled employment, but also to higher education. And ideally, these qualifications should be provided not just as double qualifications, but in an integrated form as hybrid qualifications. This challenge has been handled in quite different ways in the Nordic countries. In Sweden and Finland it has been a priority to give all young people an opportunity to get access to higher education in an integrated full time school-based upper secondary education, while giving little priority to work-based learning of vocational skills. Denmark, on the contrary, has maintained a strong division between two tracks of upper secondary education. As a consequence, young people at the age of 16 have to choose between acquiring eligibility for higher education or attaining vocational qualifications in a modernised form of apprenticeship. The Nordic VET systems are facing two additional challenges: social inclusion and esteem. The aim of this report is to analyse the way the Danish VET system has been coping with these challenges in the last decades.

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