When you arrive in Switzerland with teenage children, there comes a moment that takes almost all Spanish parents by surprise. Your child is 15 or 16 years old, the end of compulsory schooling is approaching, and the careers adviser explains that there are two paths: the Gymnasium, which prepares them for university, or an apprenticeship, the dual vocational training programme. And they add, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, that most Swiss young people choose an apprenticeship. That it’s perfectly normal. That it’s by no means a failure.
For someone coming from Spain, where the pressure to go to university is almost a cultural norm in itself, this comes as a shock at first. Here, 65–70 per cent of young Swiss people undertake an apprenticeship – known as ‘apprentissage’ in French and ‘Berufslehre’ in German. They spend three or four years combining practical work in a real company with theoretical lessons at a vocational college. At the end, they obtain a CFC, the Federal Certificate of Competence, which is genuinely recognised in the labour market. And they can continue their studies if they wish, via the vocational baccalaureate, which gives access to the Federal Institutes of Technology and the Universities of Applied Sciences.
There is no magic behind Switzerland’s low youth unemployment rate. It is simply that the system ensures that the vast majority of young people leaving school already have a foot in the labour market, and the company where they undertake their apprenticeship often goes on to employ them afterwards. For Spanish parents with school-age children here, it is a decision that is well worth understanding properly before dismissing it out of hand.