Stressed about the Leaving Cert? Here’s what Ireland could learn from Germany about how to handle exams

John Dowling says he has no idea how he performed in his Leaving Certificate, nor does he care. He left Ireland for Germany a week after his exams, discovered its learn-while-you-earn vocational training system and became a logistics professional. “I honestly can’t remember how I did in the Leaving,” the 49-year-old says, “but it wouldn’t have gotten me the points for anything sexy in university.”

When we speak by phone he is heading from his adoptive home near Munich to fly to Ireland, where another generation is facing into Leaving Certificate examinations. Claims that “the Leaving isn’t everything” collide, as generations of young school-leavers know, with the reality of an Irish educational system—and wider societal culture—that prioritises academic learning and where many view other options as second best.

In Ireland nearly every second school-leaver goes to university—one of the highest rates in the world—compared with 40 per cent or less in the United States and most European countries. In Germany about 44 per cent of any final school year take the Abitur, the Leaving Certificate equivalent, but of them only 60 per cent end up in a university. Another 45 per cent of each school-leaving year decide for the vocational, or VET, path. From traditional trades such as carpentry to technical professions—engineering, laboratory technician or IT systems technician—many in Germany see the non-academic VET path as the backbone of Europe’s largest economy.

Unlike many university degree programmes, the VET dual training course content is created in collaboration between trade bodies, employers, employees and state government.

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Dowling spent his first five years in Bavaria working for a removals company until friends urged him to upskill. “I realised I knew trucks and containers from the inside, literally, so I started as an apprentice as a Speditionskaufmann,” he says, using the German term for a forwarding agent. Over the next two years he spent two days a week at school and the rest working through departments of a logistics company, learning every aspect of the business. “It’s a great combination of practical experience—taking responsibility on the front line of work—as well as getting a wider background in school on aspects like business German and legal stuff you need to know.”

The VET programmes are regularly updated and the participants closely monitored, with trainees required to file a weekly log of their work, signed by their boss, to their local chamber of commerce or trade body. “There’s a plan in place to ensure companies are upholding certain standards and that people don’t end up as slave labour,” Dowling says. “The training was bang on the money. I was absolutely prepared for the profession.”

Generations of VET participants say the system is a win-win for trainees and firms. The trainees gain full worker protection even while still training; employers, by making the effort upfront with trainees, end up with employees who have the skills they need and save on the expense and pot luck of recruiting from the open market. In a 2010 review, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development described the system as “deeply embedded and widely respected in German society” and said that it offers “qualifications in a broad spectrum of professions and flexibly adapts to the changing needs of the labour market”.

[ Leaving Cert diary: ‘My hand, my hand! It is so sore from all the writing’ ]

Govet, Germany’s international co-operation office on the VET system, points to another recent study, this time a Swiss one, showing greater innovation among companies that take on trainees compared with those that don’t. “If you have to communicate what you do to young people, you are forced to reflect on your processes, and therein lies a huge innovation potential,” says Thorsten Schlich, Govet’s communications head. “An employer knows the competencies someone has with VET qualifications because it is an integrated system, whereas the Anglo-Saxon modular-based education system requires prospective employers to check everything.”

Germany has not been immune to a drift of younger people towards universities and academic training in recent years. But Schlich says numbers indicate the tide is turning again as a shortage of qualified workers increases salaries and adds to the attractiveness of trades for young people—“I have a plasterer in my house now who earns more per hour than me, with three academic qualifications.”

Schlich was in Berlin this week at Re:publica, a leading festival for digital culture, flying the flag for Germany’s dual training system as a pillar of the country’s digital transformation. Assisting him was Gerhild Fischer, a master baker whose family has been in the bread business since 1799—the 58-year-old is an eighth-generation (and first woman) baker.

She is an enthusiastic proponent of dual training and its potential. After years building up her business and training apprentices, she has embraced new digital opportunities. They include 3D-printed compostable baking forms and customised, personalised products such as the “Re:publica” biscuits she is handing out in Berlin. Now Fischer is working on a VR headset system so her trainees can be taught to bake bread without wasting ingredients. “I’m all for tradition, but I never forget where the modern world is today and how I can use it to keep relevant,” she says.

Like Govet, Germany’s chambers of commerce and embassies have been working for years to bring the model to interested countries. For many the joined-up, learn-as-you-earn system is an effective antidote to chronic youth unemployment across Europe. Germany has a steady jobless rate of less than 5 per cent, compared with an EU average of 17 per cent—in Ireland it has dropped again to 4.9 per cent but spiked to five times that in the pandemic.

Minister of Further and Higher Education Simon Harris met the German ambassador last week to discuss closer ties. From the new technological universities to the ongoing reform of higher education and training, apprenticeship options will be included in this year’s CAO offers for the first time. Harris has promised to tackle what he calls the “snobby attitude we have in this country that the only way one can progress in life is to go from the Leaving Certificate to the university”. “I do not know why we insist on narrowing the conversation so early in this country,” he told the Dáil in 2020.

For John Dowling, Germany’s dual training system opened up a career path far broader than his forgotten Leaving Certificate results would ever have done. “The company I trained with actively welcomed me and encouraged me to challenge its way of doing things. That was a big ask,” he says. “Training is in the DNA here, and I see opportunity for collaboration between Germany and Ireland.”