ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at developments between the national and the European level, taking as examples two relatively similar education systems. Within the European Union, Austria and Germany are best known for their extensive systems of vocational education and training and especially their long-term institutionalization of the dual training principle. This means that a significant proportion of young people are enrolled in programs at the upper-secondary level that combine in-firm training with theoretical learning at a vocational school. However, in both countries, the dual-track vocational education and training is institutionally separated from general academic education at the upper-secondary level (the Gymnasium type of school) and also university-level education. This institutional divide, which Baethge (2006) has called the “educational schism,” leads to a lack of permeability between the two major sectors in the German and Austrian national education systems—namely, between vocational education and training (VET) and higher education (HE).
