The Vocational Training Act and training regulations set the legal frame for quality assurance of the in-company part of the training. An essential component is the institutionalized involvement of the social partners. The quality assurance of the school part is the task of the federal states.

Quality assurance at system level

The Vocational Training Act defines the overall objectives of the apprenticeship, sets the frame for the in-company training and regulates the involvement of the social partners. Training regulations establish nationwide minimum standards for each occupation that have to be met by all training companies. They are elaborated together with professional experts nominated by the social partners and have the force of law. The social partners are involved in the governance of the system on all levels following the principle of equal participation.

The amended Vocational Training Act from 2005 explicitly assigns the task to work towards a continuous development of quality in vocational education and training to the Vocational Education and Training Committees of the chambers.

Quality assurance for the in-company training

Quality assurance of the in-company training is set along the legal requirements. Accordingly a training company has:

• to prove its suitability as a training place;
• to elaborate an in-company training plan for each apprentice based on the training regulation of the occupation;
• to employ an in-company trainer with the required personal and professional qualifications (the latter is proved via an examination at the responsible chamber); and
• to assure that the apprentice keeps a record book.

Those requirements are controlled by the chamber in charge, which also advises the companies on all training issues. The final examination is taken by an independent committee of the chamber involving employer, employee and vocational school representatives.
Many companies have internal quality assurance systems. Besides there exists a range of specific instruments for the quality assurance of the in-company training, e.g. regular self-assessment of the apprentices.
From 2010 on there was a three-year pilot project initiative on “Quality development and assurance in in-company vocational education and training” financed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). It was aimed especially at small and medium enterprises in order to tackle the question of quality systematically and consistently.

Quality assurance at the vocational schools

The quality assurance of the school part is the task of the federal states. The framework curriculum is usually either directly adopted by the individual federal states or adapted into state-specific curricula for the vocational schools.

Source: Apprenticeship Toolbox, 2017a.

Quality assurance for apprenticeships has been facilitated by its adoption within the formal technical education system and use of competency based training - it is to some extent easier to determine which competencies they can learn at school and which ones they can develop on the job.  

Programme delivery: Each apprentice has an individually designed training plan that establishes all of the learning activities that he/she is expected to engage in, alternating between classroom instruction (20 per cent of their time during the apprenticeship period) and work-based learning (80 per cent). Each activity responds to a workplace-specific context and details the academic requirements, job skills, expected learning results, learning settings, and timing in which each of these will be developed. The learning plan involves a rotation to various workstations in different units of the firm, all of which are related to the required curriculum content for the selected area of study or career track followed by the student. In-plant learning is articulated at all times, with the required learning plan established by the educational institution. In some cases, apprentices might need to attend school more regularly for a period of two to three weeks to receive intensive academic training in areas that they might not have the chance to develop while in the firm or to strengthen certain skills that employers might report are still weak.  

Assessment: The evaluation process is ongoing. It occurs during classroom and work-based learning. Work-based learning is monitored through the continuous measurement of the attainment of learning objectives and established results identified in the rotation plan. For this purpose, there are weekly reports that detail the apprentice’s individual in-firm progress on the basis of the rotation plan. The apprentice is required to submit a weekly report describing all of the activities performed and the learning he/ she has acquired in the process. These reports are validated by the company-assigned trainer and reviewed by the tutor assigned by the school. Once the apprentice has met all of the requirements of his/her learning plan (including school credits) and based on all of the evaluations and reports submitted, the corresponding academic credential is granted (upper secondary technical degree).  

Quality assurance: The programme is executed by a technical-pedagogical team that operates in every participating school. The team is led by a manager of outreach relations who is responsible for interacting with participating enterprises and liaising with both school tutors (in charge of supervising student progress on an ongoing basis) and the enterprise trainer (trained to supervise the apprentices’ learning in the workplace). Each firm agrees to implement a quality-assurance process, which aims to track the quality of the student's in-firm learning process. This process allows one to follow student performance and progress through each workstation or learning activity. The weekly progress reports record and grade student learning and provide the necessary information to document student progress. The key aspect of quality assurance mainly relies on public educational institutions, particularly school tutors. It is their responsibility to ensure that learning plans comply with the requirements of the competency-based curriculum framework; negotiate with firms the exact sequence of rotation plans and verify that the latter provide a developmental path to apprentices; monitor student and firm compliance with the learning and rotation plans; and collect, in collaboration with the firm trainer, weekly reports on the apprentice’s performance.

Source: Fazio et al., 2016.