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Apprenticeship Training: A Dedicated Educational Engineering
Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
– Confucius
1.1. Introduction
All educational programs are driven by the same desire: to advance their students by transmitting knowledge, ways of reasoning, know-how, interpersonal skills and behaviors. Many studies have been carried out as the social sciences have developed and the pedagogical processes have been analyzed, revisited, modified and periodically renewed. Today, they are complemented and enriched by discoveries about how the brain works. Neuroscience now contributes to the personal development of the individual. However, when the objective of a training course is to legitimize participants in their exercise of a function or a job, the most appropriate modes of transmission and assimilation are questioned.
What pedagogy should be applied to ensure that the beneficiaries are best trained in the requirements of their future activities? How can the possible dissolutions of the impacts of transmission modes be limited? How can we satisfy everyone’s thirst for learning? How can we promote an individual’s talent in regard to an envisaged function or a profession? The pedagogy of work-linked training, the one, which brings together knowledge, doing and being, and is rooted in the evolution of humanity, is a topical subject1 and a major concern for economic, educational and political actors. Apprenticeships appear to be a solution to the unemployment of young people when it stands as an obvious way of supporting the development of a society.
1.2. Why propose an apprenticeship? Evidence, an ambition, a reasoned choice or an opportunistic behavior?
1.2.1. The approach, the creative process, the pillar: the change in power
The decision to offer an apprenticeship is strongly linked not only to the role or career path for which it prepares a person, but also to the nomenclature of qualifications and diplomas to which it belongs. Apprenticeships are therefore commonly integrated into the training curricula of craft trades. The latter are legitimately recognized as requiring the transfer of the expertise of an experienced person, a legacy of the companionship of past centuries.
However, when the ESSEC Business School decided in 1993 to offer apprenticeships to all its students (admitted on a competitive basis or by M2 equivalence) in its Grande École program, higher education was disconcerted. ESSEC, a highly selective management school, explains that all the professions of excellence require not only a transfer of knowledge, but also a long-term experience that is not possible to acquire through a succession of internships of variable duration in different worlds and on heterogeneous themes.
As a result, health professions (physician, surgeon, pharmacist), legal professions (lawyer, notary, accountant), airline pilots and musicians impose years of “apprenticeship or companionship” alongside a peer or manager, where only the legal status and vocation of the novice differ (intern, employee, clerk) and the daily reality is identical. The pedagogical approach is based on several components. It articulates specific and regular theoretical teachings that allow the apprentice to understand the environment in which he will evolve, the rules of the art that he will have to apply and those of the teachings in professional situations, allowing him to familiarize himself, with the help and supervision of an apprenticeship manager, with the complexity of the practice. Work-linked training thus constitutes the keystone of the knowledge-assimilation process.
1.2.2. The choice of pace of work-linked training and duration: tailor-made
Apprenticeship arrangements are based on the activities of the profession in question and the expected level of autonomy, as described very precisely in the certification standards for the relevant qualifications and diplomas. It is therefore necessary to precisely determine the time required to acquire all the skills needed to pass the tests for obtaining the diploma that recognizes the ability to perform the relevant function. The rate of work-linked training must be based on the rise in expected and acquired competences. The mission in the company chosen by the apprentice and proposed by the company must be perfectly aligned with the pedagogical objectives of the program. Indeed, the apprenticeship contract is the basis for obtaining the diploma or qualification.
Each profession is part of an environment that develops its own specificity and rules. Marketing professions in the cosmetics sector therefore have more intense periods of activity than others during the calendar year (budget period, business review, product launch, etc.), like audit functions but with a different seasonal structure (fiscal year). It is therefore essential to establish a pace of work-linked training that takes into account functional and sectoral specificities as well as the size of the economic entity welcoming the apprentice, while optimizing and adjusting academic constraints (size of promotions, content layout, educational mix). It is necessary to build a balance that aggregates the duration of the contract in number of months, the terms of the apprentice’s presence in the company whether full-time (semester, trimester, weekly) or part-time (number of days per week shared or time in the shared day), favoring observation, support, management, repetition, task control and mastering while maintaining the apprentice’s availability for highly satisfactory cognitive functions in acquiring the fundamental theoretical knowledge.
Consequently, of the 353 apprentices in the Grande École program in 2018, 47% are working on a semester basis, 43% on a weekly basis and 10% on a quarterly basis. In addition, 77% of apprentices in consulting positions and 86% of auditing apprentices have a half-yearly work/study schedule.
1.2.3. International experience
The ESSEC Business School prepares its students for practicing their job on a worldwide basis. Living for six months in a foreign country, either for an academic exchange or for professional experience, is a major component of the diploma. Students who choose an apprenticeship can include their international experience in this course. However, it is easier for them to benefit from an academic exchange than from an assignment to a foreign subsidiary of their French host company. (Under French law, apprenticeship contracts must be signed with a French corporation). To date, many administrative (social security coverage, costs, barriers to entry into a country) and organizational (new apprenticeship manager, work–study balance) obstacles make this alternative complicated and risky and often force the apprentice to fulfill this condition at the end of his apprenticeship contract and, in fact, to extend his schooling. The aforementioned law of September 5, 2018 reaffirms, in its article 24, the need for simplified access to long-term international mobility.
1.2.4. The individualization of courses
Apprenticeship pedagogy must also open up and adapt to the wishes and projects of young people to enable them to succeed, i.e. to achieve the personal and professional project of their choice, (for the authors, success in this context means achieving one’s project). Successive generations (baby boomers, generation X, generation Y or millennials, etc.) and their increasingly rapid evolution have destroyed the idea of a standard model and a pedagogical model. There is no longer a single accepted model of success. Everyone develops their own personal and professional project.
An apprenticeship and its pedagogy must therefore also meet these requirements. Thanks to the organization of studies by term, ESSEC is able to offer its apprentices a personalized course: each term, the apprentice chooses the courses he will follow, as well as his work/study schedule.
A pillar of apprenticeship pedagogy, the tutoring system provides each apprentice with two-fold support:
- – the apprenticeship manager: a professional employee of the corporation having at least a diploma equivalent to the one prepared by the apprentice;
- – a tutor, a member of the educational community. The variety of profiles of tutors helps encourage this individualization and provide the apprentice efficient support to meet his professional and personal objective.
1.3. Validation of the apprentice’s acquisition of skills: know-how, soft skills and practical knowledge
Ensuring that the apprentice has acquired during his experience the expected competences is essential to obtaining the diploma, as well as gaining the self-confidence that is crucial for the apprentice to legitimately claim his future position and obtain the corresponding salary recognition. Verification and validation methods are variable. They frequently take the form of an evaluation showing the level reached by the apprentice according to the breakdown of the activities assigned to him. The nature of the tasks evaluated must match the skills sought. It is important to take into consideration the achievement of the objective, as well as the means used, the obstacles encountered and overcome, and the personal qualities developed by the apprentice.
Throughout their apprenticeship experience, apprentices will be trained and supervised by their manager in the company, as well as by their school tutor who will support them and advise them in their professional and/or academic choices.
The apprenticeship manager plays a decisive role in the success of the apprentice’s progression. Indeed, he must have technical, managerial and human qualities. First of all, he must be a professional recognized by his peers for his professionalism, his experience and his expertise in the chosen function. In addition, he must combine human qualities that make him a caring individual who loves to transmit knowledge and who knows how to adapt to others from different generations in order to encourage their motivation and desire for achievement. Finally, for our students, future managers, he must demonstrate leadership and teambuilding skills, among other things. In this way, he takes a real responsibility for the training, and therefore, the graduation.
The manager and the apprentice must form a relationship based on listening and mutual respect. For the apprentice, this knowledgeable professional can play a major role in his career, both positively and negatively. He can either be a role model promoting exemplarity or divert the apprentice from a clear path, with the aversion to the function being confused with that of the apprenticeship manager. But the latter can also assume the role of mentor and, over the years, maintain a non-judgmental and benevolent relationship with his former apprentice as a guide and advisor.
The CFA must therefore monitor the involvement of its apprentices’ supervisors in order to ensure that pedagogical objectives and values of the program are well shared.
Through the tripartite (manager, tutor, apprentice) meetings, privileged moments of exchange and tripartite sharing, the CFA will occasionally have an appreciation of the situation experienced by the apprentice. As the guarantor of the objectives to be achieved, the tutor will have the vocation to support the apprentice in making a success of his course and to allow him to maintain distance and objectivity in relation to the professional and academic situations encountered in order to promote his development (Ikigai). The nature of this function is therefore hybrid because it is based on a strict pedagogical framework, while at the same time laying the foundations for a serene future.
1.4. The French model: economic balances and their complexity
In France, an apprenticeship has a very specific financial model. Any student who opts for an apprenticeship benefits from a totally free education; while an employee of the host company, he receives a monthly salary, regardless of the number of days he is in the company. Moreover, the tuition fee is paid by the corporation using a French tax (see below). In other words, the apprenticeship system allows all students, regardless of their level of resources, to train for high-level careers.
Table 1.1. Social origins of apprentices in the “Grande École” program (ESSEC-2018)
| Parents’ socio-professional categories | Apprentices | Non-apprentices | Total |
| Farmer-operators | 23% | 77% | 46.5 |
| Craftspeople and traders | 10% | 90% | 424.5 |
| Executives, professionals and business leaders | 11% | 89% | 3320.5 |
| Intermediate professions | 13% | 87% | 599 |
| Employees | 16% | 84% | 347 |
| Manual workers | 24% | 76% | 66.5 |
| Retired people | 13% | 87% | 264 |
| Others | 14% | 86% | 302 |
The financing of CFAs then becomes essential and vital to the sustainability of the system. As a result, companies are subject to a tax on their payroll known as the “taxe d’apprentissage” (apprenticeship tax), which is intended, in part, to support the development of apprenticeships. The reform of September 5, 2018 reviews the collection procedures and the eligible funding bodies. To date, we do not have any certainty about the levels of coverage of contract costs by skills operators, nor do we know the levels of equalization that France Compétence could pay for inter-branch apprenticeship training in higher education, but this reform is in itself already beneficial. Indeed, the funding methods based on the old texts had the effect of masking the richness of work–study teaching methods and focusing discourse on apprenticeships in higher education, rather than the methods of financing the CFAs, the commitments obtained by companies and the disputes over the subsidies awarded. The reform aims to bring together the needs of the different professional sectors identified by the professional branches and the training proposed by the CFAs. At ESSEC, we can only welcome these guidelines becoming official because they confirm our vision of an apprenticeship and its interdependence with the developments of economic actors.
1.5. The governance of an apprenticeship program: power issues?
The creation of an apprenticeship program often refers to the virtuous circle. Indeed, as we have seen previously, the contents are provided in such a way as to support the apprentice’s empowerment in increasing autonomy and responsibility within the profession for which he is preparing. The attractiveness of graduates trained by apprenticeships on the targeted labor market is a strong indicator of the quality and relevance of the training provided, but also of the CFA’s ability to identify, understand and anticipate changes in the skills and competences sought by the labor market.
The creation of steering committees or advisory boards for each program, in addition to the improvement council (legally required by law in the French system), makes it possible to adapt the programs on an annual basis. Ideally composed of the program’s professors, CFA representatives, apprenticeship managers from the main corporate partners and tutors, this committee reviews the past year’s results on the profiles sought and the missions proposed. It encourages exchanges and discussions of new emerging needs, and developments aimed at changing or eliminating certain practices, so that these signals are immediately integrated into the following year’s educational models. Apprenticeship in a program is therefore an essential tool for steering and the Justice of the Peace is the reason for its existence.
Yet, while apprenticeships have been around for more than a millennium, many challenges remain.
We will begin with this cultural challenge by considering its image. Even today, for many, the word “apprenticeship” still conveys an image that is not very rewarding, as the collective unconscious equates it with failure, poverty and lack of intelligence. This vision is wrong; it is based on an absurd opposition between manual activities and intellectual activities, mediated by irresponsible people. No profession can be carried out without observation, active listening, progressive practice or repetition to achieve total mastery, whether we work in finance, marketing, project management or consultancy.
The challenge is of innovation in a constantly changing world. Dell Technologies’ Institute for the Future predicts that 85% of jobs that will exist in the United States by 2030 do not exist today. Similarly, Céreq studies predict that, by 2025, 45% of the current jobs in France will disappear. New programs will therefore have to be created with agility and flexibility.
The challenge of digitalization will allow there to be a new relationship between the apprentice and the educational community. Consequently, Openclassroom offers, as of today, 100% online training courses that make it possible for everyone to become an apprentice in their field of expertise.
The challenge is then of internationalization with European apprenticeships and, as a first step, the definition of a common framework.
“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand”, said Confucius.
Chapter written by Florence LE FIBLEC and Michel GORDIN.
- 1 See the law of September 5, 2018, “Liberté de choisir son avenir professionnel”.