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The last decade has given rise to a strong public discourse in most highly industrialized economies about the importance of a skilled workforce as a key response to the competitive dynamic fostered by economic globalisation. The challenge for different training regimes is twofold: attracting young people into the vocational training system while continuing to train workers already in employment. Yet, on the whole, most countries and their training systems have failed to reach those goals. How can we explain this contradiction? Why is vocational training seen to be an "old" institution? Why does vocational training not seem to be easily adapted to the realities of the 21st century? This book seeks to respond to these important questions. It does so through an in-depth comparative analysis of the vocational training systems in ten different countries: Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Korea, Mexico, Morocco, the United Kingdom and the USA.
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Vocational education and training (VET) is often defined by its specific content or the purpose of training. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the International Labour Organization (ILO), for example, define VET as ‘means of preparing for occupational fields and for effective participation in the world of work’ (UNEVOC 2006: 1). Such a technical definition seems inadequate, since university education also prepares students for the world of work and often for specific occupational fields. For professionals like doctors, teachers or lawyers, the occupational fields are sometimes even better defined and demarcated than those for vocational training. Thus the main difference between VET and higher education lies not in the preparation for work but in the earlier specialization for an occupational field and the lower social status of VET. In some countries, the low status of VET can easily be recognized if less neutral language is used, with VET being described as offering pathways for academically weaker students. The social status of VET is determined by its position not only in the education system but also in the labour market. VET certainly enjoys higher esteem in countries in which it opens up access to well-paid jobs with complex tasks and good career opportunities than it does in countries with polarized job structures and high shares of low-skill, low-paid jobs offering few career opportunities. Depending on the quality of the VET, the signals vocational certificates give to employers might differ from country to country. In some countries, they might signal competency to perform complex tasks autonomously in a broad occupational field; in others, however, they might signal that the holder is a low achiever in the school system and possesses only narrowly based skills for specific jobs.
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Vocational training is an imprecise term in the Canadian context. In English-speaking Canada, a variety of terms have been used in place of vocational training, such as labour force development, work-related training, technical education and the very general term post-secondary education. In Quebec, the French term ‘formation professionnelle et technique’ has remained in use over the years to refer to preparation for the practice of a trade or occupation as a technician, although a variety of other terms have also been used. The lack of a clear reference to vocational training in Canada is not simply a question of terminology, but is also indicative of a lack of co-ordinated focus on vocational training in this country and of its low social value. As the first children born in the post–World War II baby boom reached early adulthood, governments, and the federal government in particular, became concerned about the capacity of the economy to absorb all the young people about to enter the labour market. Massive investments in colleges and universities were made to ensure that these large numbers of young people were integrated more gradually into the labour market and to better prepare them for a labour market that was shifting from natural resource extraction and manufacturing to services. Vocational training became the poor second cousin of these new institutions as the focus shifted to preparing young Canadians for the sophisticated future world of work.
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The aim of this chapter is to present the overall configuration of sectoral human resource initiatives in Quebec in the 1990s.� Although some of the initiatives referred to in this chapter date back to the 1980s, sectoral initiatives have only truly emerged in Quebec since the beginning of the present decade. Despite their recent nature, they represent a significant innovation in the field of industrial relations and, as such, unquestionably constitute an important subject of research. The chapter first reviews some of the milestones in the recent history of Quebec labour market policies and of concertation practices between the actors
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A common thread running through the analysis of economic issues and labor relations for more than 10 years in all industrialized countries has undoubtedly been the issue of competitiveness in a global economy vis-à-vis the role of the State. This issue has fueled challenges to the interventionist state, to highly regulated and centralized systems, to obstacles to flexibility, and so on. The question that arises is whether a strongly national – even regional – construction industry can avoid these strong forces. In fact, the Canadian experience demonstrates that the systems for regulating the construction industry in several Canadian provinces have begun to undergo a process of adjustment – even deregulation – to new market conditions. However, the case of Quebec is an interesting exception to this trend, particularly because it has followed a highly regulated model despite the difficulties experienced by the industry, which was hard hit by the two deep recessions of 1982-3 and 1991-2.
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- Charest, Jean
- Boudarbat, Brahim (1)
- Hébert, Gérard (1)
- Jalette, Patrice (1)
- Simard, Marcel (1)
- Trudeau, Gilles (2)
- Veilleux, Diane (1)