Apprenticeship

Apprenticeship is a system of training people who are learning how to do a job which needs special skill. Someone who is learning in this way is called an "apprentice". An apprentice will learn by working with someone who is already skilled at a job. They are like a teacher and pupil.

The profession of roofing is learned through apprenticeship in Germany.

A medieval baker with his apprentice. The Bodleian Library, Oxford.

Development

The system of apprenticeship has been used for many hundreds of years. In the late Middle Ages the craft guilds and town governments used to watch and control the system. A master craftsman had the right to employ young people to work for them and pay them a small salary. In return the apprentice would be learning the trade. Most apprentices were males, but female apprentices are more common nowadays, especially in crafts such as embroidery, silk-weaving etc..

Related pages

• Education

Further reading

• Modern Apprenticeships: the way to work, The Report of the Modern Apprenticeship Advisory Committee, 2001 Archived 2007-10-27 at the Wayback Machine
• Apprenticeship in the British "Training Market", Paul Ryan and Lorna Unwin, University of Cambridge and University of Leicester, 2001 Archived 2010-06-27 at the Wayback Machine
• Creating a ‘Modern Apprenticeship’: a critique of the UK’s multi-sector, social inclusion approach Alison Fuller and Lorna Unwin, 2003 (pdf) Archived 2005-10-16 at the Wayback Machine
• Apprenticeship systems in England and Germany: decline and survival. Thomas Deissinger in: Towards a history of vocational education and training (VET) in Europe in a comparative perspective, 2002 (pdf) Archived 2011-07-21 at the Wayback Machine

Other websites

• The School of Applied Arts Apprentice program Archived 2007-02-09 at the Wayback Machine
• Facts about Germany: Apprenticeships, Federal Foreign Office Archived 2015-01-08 at the Wayback Machine
• Apprenticeships - a great idea (UK)
• L'Apprenti, in French
• Article on the history of apprenticeship in the U.S. Archived 2007-03-11 at the Wayback Machine from EH.NET
• Academic Apprentices: Still an Ideal?, Barry Yeoman, Duke Magazine