Vocational qualifications can aid progression along career paths, or facilitate entire career changes.
Amid evidence that growing numbers of school leavers are leapfrogging university and applying directly to prestigious firms, Willetts said Britain needed to learn from other countries in providing vocational training and encouraging progression from skills-based courses to academic study.
This was a clear aim of many of the associate college arrangements developed in the 1990s and indeed by the Hefce funded Lifelong Learning Networks initiative, that built local partnerships based on progression and vocational programmes transforming and boosting opportunities and economic development.
As underlined in the report, negotiations and collective bargaining are vitally important in the fight to abolish discrimination against women, in particular with regard to access to employment, wages, occupational health and safety conditions, career progression, and vocational training.
Accordingly, the worst chances of progression to full vocational education and training are experienced by young females with a lower secondary school-leaving certificate.
It was a great opportunity to explore firsthand the structured partnerships in the German educational system working to remedy the skills gap, on one hand, and the shortage of skilled workers, on the other, through student progression on the vocational track of their school system.
At youth centres, young people value the non-health benefits including availability of recreational facilities, prevention of idleness, building of confidence, improving interpersonal communication skills, vocational training and facilitation of career progression.
"They provide everything, I can go there to play, to watch movies, I can be guided, I can be tested", (IDI 14 year old, Laikipia youth centre) The other reported benefits included engaging in recreational activities and provision of information, vocational training and advice on career progression.
A spokeswoman said: "The recommendations safeguard the interests of young people with measures that can support real progression, raise the quality of vocational provision and, crucially, secure core achievements in English and maths".
We assume that the tendency of both forms of vocational education and training is that differences in opportunities for progression between young males and females are more marked in the case of school leavers with a lower secondary school-leaving certificate than for those with an intermediate secondary school-leaving certificate (hypothesis 1c).
"Vocational skills are equal to academic skills, and apprenticeships can offer excellent career progression".
