The current state of the challenges for VET in Denmark

The aim of this report is to analyse the way the Danish VET system has been coping with four challenges in the last decades. First the report describes key features of the institutional architecture of the current Danish VET-system. In the next two sections priority is given to the challenges of offering ‘double qualifications’ that simultaneously give access to skilled employment and higher education. The Danish system of vocational education builds on the apprenticeship model and this model offers a smooth transition to employment, which takes when apprentices are being trained in a workplace. The report examines how the VET systems connects with the labour market and explores the patterns of transition of the students from VET to the labour market and describes indications of their mobility and employability.
In the following section the report focusses on the second challenge for vocational education of providing eligibility for studies in higher education. This analysis starts with a view back at the political discussion behind the reform of vocational education in the 1970ies that for the first time put the issue of double qualifications on the agenda. In addition this section will examine the suc-cess of subsequent reforms of VET in improving the connections between VET and higher educa-tion, latest with the reform in 2013.
The next challenge to be examined is that of social inclusion. This is mainly a question of raising the retention of students in the vocational programmes, where the drop-out rates have been at a high level for many years. The section describes the patterns of drop-out and completion of the students, and explores how the drop-out problem has been conceived of in the political reforms of VET in the last decades and the measures taken to reduce drop-out. The next section is concerned with the challenge of raising the esteem of vocational education and attracting also ambitious young people to VET. The last section concludes on how the Danish VET system handles the trade-offs and dilemmas for VET regarding the challenges mentioned and questions for comparison with the other Nordic Countries are formulated.