Different opportunities – inheriting education: Why so few apprentices study later – News

Sepp Blatter, former Federal Councilor René Felber, union president Vania Alleva and Professor Margrit Stamm – they all managed to climb the social ladder: they come from a working-class family and studied. Such climbers are the exception rather than the rule in Switzerland.

Legend:

Only a few apprentices go to a higher technical college after their apprenticeship.

Keystone/Gaetan Bally)

“In Switzerland, it is very unlikely that you will go from rags to riches,” says Benita Combet, a sociologist at the University of Zurich.

Benita Combet

Benita Combet

sociologist and educational researcher


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Benita Combet is a sociologist at the University of Zurich and an Ambizione grantee from the Swiss National Science Foundation. In her project, she examines gender and class-based subject choice.

Social mobility in Switzerland is not particularly high in an international comparison, as the latest figures from the Federal Statistical Office show: while only 27 percent of children from educationally disadvantaged families study, the figure is 70 percent for children with academic parents.

According to Benita Combet, the extent of social mobility in a society depends above all on “how much the state is willing to support it and invest accordingly in education and the welfare state”.

In Switzerland, it is difficult for children from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds to achieve a higher level of education than that of their parents. This is mainly due to the fact that school selection takes place too early, as education researchers largely agree: in all cantons except Ticino, it is decided after six years of primary school which level the pupils will be divided into.

In almost all other OECD countries, the grades remain mixed in terms of performance up to the ninth or tenth grade. And so students who only solve a learning blockade at the age of 15 could be supported more easily. This helps talented children to advance.

How one generation passes on the level of education to the next

“It’s easier for children whose parents are educated,” explains the educational researcher. “They are more likely to support their children with their learning, and if they cannot help themselves, then they pay for the tutoring.” In addition, the costs of higher education hardly played a role for academic children.

Unlike children from poorer families, they do not have to earn money as quickly as possible. “And academic parents, it is often important that the children have a similar educational qualification as themselves.” For example, a medical dynasty where several generations of doctors have already paved the way.

Switzerland needs to think about how it wants to modernize the vocational training system.

In principle, anyone who decided to do an apprenticeship as a young person can also study medicine – the vocational baccalaureate and passerelle make it possible. But the hurdles are much higher on this path than for those who go directly to university after high school.

And that deters many: 22 percent with an apprenticeship degree do a vocational baccalaureate. Of these, however, only slightly more than half graduate from a university of applied sciences. And less than 1 percent study at a university.

Something has to change, says sociologist Benita Combet: “Switzerland needs to think about how it wants to modernize the vocational training system.” So that the apprentices have more skills at the end of the apprenticeship that they can use flexibly – and not just in one job – and later attend secondary school.

That would also be in the interest of the economy, because the need for academics cannot be met by graduates from Swiss universities and technical colleges. Talented climbers would therefore be sought after.

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