Swiss vocational model impresses chiefs
An overwhelming 94 per cent of chief executives want the Government to take a leaf out of Switzerland’s book when it comes to skills and training.
The Swiss utilise a vocational education training stream, where students combine school learning with skills developed in the workplace, resulting in an unemployment rate of just 3 per cent (as of July 2017).
After a delegation of Kiwi business leaders visited Switzerland earlier this year, the country’s approach to skills development and training impressed many.
“Our once world-class education system no longer is,” argued Roger Partridge, chairman of the New Zealand Initiative, the organisation that facilitated the delegation. “We need new solutions to give us the skilled workforce business needs, and which young New Zealanders deserve.”
And when asked to rate the impact of a variety of domestic factors on business confidence, respondents to the Herald’s CEO Survey gave an average rating of 6.8 to the skills and labour shortages factor.
This ranked as the fifth most impactful domestic factor out of the 18 rated by business leaders.
This has been a consistent trend over the 14 prior Mood of the Boardroom surveys.
Around 70 per cent of students in Switzerland enter the vocational education and training ( VET) system, which also compensates students for the practical work they do — usually a maximum of three or four days per week, with the remainder made up of academic classes.
Students have the option of apply- ing for VET programmes once they reach the age of 14, which cater for around 230 different professions.
And though vocational training programmes typically evoke images of trade and industrial professions, the Swiss model includes programmes for sectors such as information technology and other STEM fields.
As Partridge wrote at the time, the dual track system “has contributed to a highly skilled, more future-proofed workforce, and enviably low levels of youth unemployment.
“It certainly warrants study.”
All of this adds up to a society in which youth unemployment is just 8.6 per cent (the fifth lowest in the OECD), as compared with New Zea- further land’s 13.2 per cent (18th in the OECD).
Meanwhile, its higher education system continues to punch well above its weight: ETH Zurich, the country’s premier STEM university, ranks 10th= on the Times Higher Education Rankings.
The country boasts three universities in the top 100, despite being less than double the size of New Zealand — by comparison, our top-ranked university (the University of Auckland) comes in at just 192nd.
While transforming the education system is a common catch cry from politicians across the spectrum, most policy proposals appear incremental in comparison to the structural differences in Switzerland — and most Kiwi CEOs appear keen for that model to be considered more seriously.