Читать книгу The Swiss Model of Vocational Education and Training - Markus Mäurer - Страница 6

In recent years, international interest in the Swiss system of vocational education and training (VET) has grown. Key reasons for this are: VET is very important in Swiss education and training, and the system design has some striking features; and the country’s low rate of youth unemployment is seen by many to be a result of the country’s VET system.

In line with this growing interest, the English literature on Swiss VET in English has also been growing. Apart from publications for a mainly academic audience that cover different aspects of Swiss VET, most other English publications focus on the system. In this book, however, we aim to cover both systemic and pedagogical aspects of Swiss VET but obviously in very condensed format. The focus here is on dual-track VET. School-based VET and professional education and training (PET) are covered only very briefly. In all those cases, where we focus on the overall system, we make use of the term ‘vocational and professional education and training’ (VPET) that has become somewhat common in English literature on Swiss VET.

In the preparation of this book, some publications have been of particular importance. For the current terminology and data on Swiss VET, the SERI’s (2016) ‘Facts and Figures’ publication on Swiss VPET (updated on a yearly basis) and the database of the Federal Statistical Office were enormously helpful. Data and other information from these two sources are cited without explicit reference in the text. We also would like to direct readers of this book to the rich online VPET-glossary by the SDBB, which is in large part also available in English,¹ as well as to the comprehensive work by Wettstein, Schmid and Gonon (2014) on Swiss VPET.