Historical evolution of vocational education in Denmark until 1945

This chapter explores this transition process after the adoption of the principles of liberalism with the Free Trades Act of 1857 until the late 1930s, when a new apprenticeship act recognised the self-governance of the labour market organisations in the field of VET. it does so with a problem-based approach that seeks to identify the key challenges for the stakeholders of the Danish VET-system, and examines how these challenges were managed in a process of struggles, negotiations and compromises. A major challenge for VET in this period was to establish new forms of regulation to maintain the quality of vocational training after the guild lost their control of apprenticeship system. The outcome of this process depended on the contentious interactions between the organisations of the artisans and the new industries, between the organisations of skilled and unskilled labour and not the least, the interests and the role of the state. It is argued that in the Danish case, like in the German (Thelen, 2004), strong forms of path dependency and continuity can be identified as regards the institutional architecture of the VET-system.