The contradictory location of high school apprenticeship in Canada

Abstract

Recent education policies focus on making youth pathways more transparent while addressing skills shortage. However, there appears to be ambivalence about the target audience for ‘new vocational’ programmes in secondary schools and how they should be organized. This paper begins from the observation that Canadian policy‐makers, like those in other countries, have shown increasing interest in bringing vocational and academic tracks into closer alignment. However, drawing on empirical data from a number of case studies of high school apprenticeship, we argue that persistent tensions in educational policy and practice can be explained by the legacy of the historical development of high school vocational education, the ambivalent position of vocational education in the ‘knowledge‐based economy’ and the competing interests of different partners. We conclude that greater awareness of the distributional issues that underlie vocational education policies is needed.

Keywords:

• apprenticeship
• new vocationalism
• positional competition

Acknowledgements

I appreciate funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Canadian Council on Learning to support this research. I would also like to thank Bonnie Watt‐Malcolm for her work on this project.

Notes

1. Most apprenticeship programmes require students to complete a combination of on‐the‐job and in‐school training. For example, for the carpenter trade in Ontario, the ‘in‐school’ portion involves three segments (basic, intermediate and advanced levels), each lasting eight weeks to be taken at intervals after completing a certain number of on‐the‐job hours. When they complete the hours and school requirements, apprentices may write an exam to attain their journey‐person certification (Certificate of Qualification).

2. The Diversified Occupational Program was recommended as part of the 1962 Robarts Plan. It involved students spending half of their time in academic subjects and the other half in practical work. The goal was to encourage students who might otherwise drop out of school to obtain a ‘good educational background’ (Robarts Plan 1962, cited in Freeman, 59–60).

3. It is important to note that KBE discourse is not without critics who suggest that claims have been exaggerated (Livingstone 1999; Lloyd and Payne 2002). As evidence, they point to increasing polarization between relatively secure high‐skilled work and precarious, low‐skilled work and problems of credential inflation.

4. Raffe defines transitions systems as the ‘relatively enduring features of a country’s institutional and structural arrangements which shape transition processes and outcomes’ (2009, 278).

5. The gendered assumption about who is a potential apprentice is very evident in the interview data. Canadian statistics suggest that female enrolment in apprenticeship training in 2002 was approximately one‐tenth that of male enrolment (Raykov and Livingstone 2005).

6. Local training boards are non‐profit organizations funded by federal and provincial governments to improve conditions in their local labour markets. In Ontario communities, they help to promote the OYAP programme.

7. Again, the apprentice is gendered male either explicitly or implicitly in most discourse about apprenticing in construction trades.