A Study On Modern Apprenticeship In The UK

As the main form of professional education, apprenticeship has a long history and it plays a great role in promoting economic development and social progress in the UK. The traditional apprenticeship originated in the 12th century, with the development of handicraft guilds and regulation of apprenticeships, apprenticeship in the UK had become the most important skills training mode in the middle ages. Up to 15 or 16 century, British traditional apprenticeship came to its prosperity periods. With the development of commodity economy and reflection of the seeds of capitalism, Britain’s industrial revolution had been pushed fast. From 1760s to 1830s, the Industrial Revolution had completed and it greatly influenced the social structure, the mode of production, as well as craft guilds. Although the apprenticeship suffered several ups and downs, once it was ignored by the British government and business owners, but never withdrew from the stage of history. Due to the inherent defects and the British government’s laissez-faire towards vocational education, led to the slow development of social economy. Because of complacency about the role of the world’s factory, the UK increasingly fell behind the emerging capitalist countries, USA, Germany and so on. The UK rethought their former painful experiences and got some valuable experience that is worth drawing on from the successful experience of German "Dual System", opened the modern apprenticeship program in 1993. In order to solve various social problems, such as high unemployment, and vocational education has always not been given enough attention and the skills of enterprise staff are generally low and so forth, Government adjusted and enriched the connotation of the apprenticeship. In the process of the reform of apprenticeship policy, the UK should combine the advantages of school vocational education and the needs of the development of social economy, injected vigor and vitality of the new times into modern apprenticeships, making it with distinct new-time characteristics. In recent years, apprenticeship as the core skills training mode of the British vocational education, its training scale is growing and training quality was increasingly being recognized and accepted by the stakeholders. The development of the modern apprenticeship, to a large extent, greatly reduced high levels of unemployment in the British society and increasingly turned around the social state of low skills, improved the social stability and strengthened consumedly the synthetically strength and the international competition.Through analysis of the stakeholders on the process of the development about traditional apprenticeship and modern apprenticeship in the UK, solved the power and resistance factors of the development about British apprenticeship in different stages. In the process of apprenticeship development, the changing of stakeholders and whether the stakeholders’appeals had been fully satisfied had relation to the apprenticeship implementation effects in different stages. From the perspective of the development of the apprenticeship, the benefit body was gradually from single to multiple, from being discrete and insular between different subjects, gradually towards the equal consultations and close cooperation. Through analyzed training investors and the interests subjects every stage of British apprenticeship, study the main stakeholders’role, responsibility and influence in the process of the evolution of the apprenticeship. Through training policy regulation on rights and responsibilities of each stakeholder, analyze various stakeholders in the apprentice training investment performance as well as the factors influencing their enthusiasm to participate in training, and analyzes how the government constantly adjusted policy to establish wide coordination mechanisms for stakeholders. Through stakeholder perspective of British apprenticeship reform, sort out the reform effort as well as the problems and reasons existing in the reform and development and further summarize the experience of the British apprenticeship, and it tends to put forward some valuable suggestions which could help to establish apprentice training system and improve the vocational education development in China.This thesis is divided into five chapters in all. The first chapter mainly introduces the domestic and foreign scholars on the related research on apprenticeships, and points out that theoretical and practical significance in this thesis, research ideas, research methods and research innovations, etc. The second chapter mainly discusses the historical change of the traditional apprenticeship:based on the proposed stakeholders perspective to analyze master and apprentice and guilds interests in the British traditional apprenticeship to explain the reasons on the decline of traditional apprenticeship historical evolution. Chapter Three highlights the development of modern apprenticeship content:deals with the development of interest group in the modern apprenticeship and the effect that such training policies changes had on the stakeholders, makes a theoretical analysis to the problems and the reasons behind the apprenticeship reform process based on the prospective of stakeholders theory and how the government, to the greatest extent, adjust training policies to arouse the enthusiasm of all parties to realize the benign development of the apprenticeship system. The fourth chapter, mainly in the view of Stakeholder Theory, makes summative evaluations for the apprenticeship. The last chapter, from the perspective of stakeholders, it states an enlightenment of the UK apprenticeship experiences for the development of apprenticeship and modern vocational education in China.