Читать книгу Swiss Vocational and Professional Education and Training (VPET) - Philipp Gonon, Emil Wettstein - Страница 12

PORTRAIT OF CAGDAS GUERAKAR

Cagdas Guerakar, 21,

is learning to become a Chemical and Pharmaceutical Technician, Federal VET Diploma

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Like with King Thrushbeard

Cagdas Guerakar is being trained as a Chemical and Pharmaceutical Technician, Federal VET Diploma (Chemie- und Pharmatechnologe EFZ) and is in his second apprenticeship year. So far, it has been almost only in the “training pilot” (Lehrpilot) and in the school laboratories of aprentas that he has been given a practical insight into his profession.

His group is called CPT, CPT like “Chemical and Pharmaceutical Technology”. The members are all learners with whom Cagdas Guerakar is doing the VET programme. Nearly every day, the prospective chemical and pharmaceutical technicians send WhatsApp messages to each other, usually to ask comprehension questions on what they have learned and to give possible answers, and in some cases organisational information about lessons. “We all help each other,” says Cagdas Guerakar. “My class has become like a family for me.”

Cagdas Guerakar is in the second year of the three-year VET programme Chemical and Pharmaceutical Technician, Federal VET Diploma. Lessons at the vocational school and in its laboratories and also the courses in the “training pilot” have been the focus of his training so far. The laboratory courses and training pilot correspond with the branch courses but their scope goes well beyond the minimum requirements of the VET ordinance (Bildungsverordnung). “We are talking about practical training,” specifies Reto Fankhauser, Head of Production Training at aprentas. Fankhauser explains: “The first apprenticeship year essentially corresponds with a traineeship entry year, hardly anything is happening in the companies.” The second apprenticeship year is also mainly school-based: out of 47 working weeks, Cagdas Guerakar spends only around 17 weeks at his host company Novartis. The rest of the time he continues to spend on the school subjects which are important for his occupation, such as Technology, IT and English, as well as practical tasks in the school laboratory. The prospective chemical and pharmaceutical technician will not really knuckle down until the third apprenticeship year which, apart from seven weeks at school, he will spend entirely at Novartis. With the exception of the special project (Vertiefungsarbeit), he will by then already have completed the qualification procedure in instruction in Language, Communication and Society (LCS) (allgemeinbildender Unterricht, ABU).

Chemical and pharmaceutical technicians work in production and development companies of the chemical and pharmaceutical industry. They control systems – such as reaction vessels or reactors – with which drugs, phytopharmaceuticals or dyes are produced. In the three courses (a total of seven weeks) in the training pilot, Cagdas Guerakar learned how they are operated. The two-storey training hall is equipped with all important reactors and other systems for the likes of filtration, distillation and drying. Here, Cagdas Guerakar’s class practised dealing with parameters such as temperature, pressure, quantity and flow velocity – like in reality but without hazardous substances. This means the people in the class were able to comprehend and transfer to reality what they had learned at school.

The fact that knowledge acquired at school does not simply mean mere theory is something Cagdas Guerakar is also experiencing in vocational instruction. In the laboratory of the Ausbildungszentrum Schweizerhalle (Schweizerhalle Training Centre) Cagdas Guerakar and his class are currently examining various substances and carrying out ion detection. The young professional knows that CO₃^2- ions can be revealed by adding acid. “We have to understand connections like this, even if we are not working in a laboratory in our profession,” he says.

Cagdas Guerakar’s training is mainly provided by aprentas, a cooperative training association with currently 74 member companies. Overall, aprentas trains around 600 learners in 15 occupations and carries out continuing education and training programmes. Although Cagdas Guerakar has an apprenticeship contract with Novartis, so far he has nearly always had teachers and instructors from aprentas. It is like in the fairy tale of the omnipresent King Thrushbeard: the branch course in the training pilot, the vocational instruction in the Schweizerhalle Training Centre, even the Language, Communication and Society lessons in Muttenz are the responsibility of the cooperative training association. This training model with a relatively high school-based part was also developed by aprentas (based on earlier models from industrial chemistry).