4 THE DUAL SYSTEM OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
vocational schools and secondary vocational apprentice schools with employers. The dual system of education and training is preparing students for employment and the labour market, which is implemented through the harmonization of teaching in schools with the specific needs of employers in the current labour market.
4.1 The dual system of education and training in an international context In almost all the Member States of the European Union, there is at least one way within the vocational education system that combines theoretical (general and vocational) education at school with practical training (work) in the workplace, i.e. at the employer, but considerable differences can be observed between countries in what other vocational training options are offered and in what proportion the individual ways are represented. While the EU Member States are reforming their vocational education and training systems and integrating work-based learning, the European Parliament emphasizes (Nogueira, 2014) that the diversity of starting positions, together with the social and economic dimension, makes it impossible for all countries to move in short-term to the same model. Besides this, because of the diversity of systems, the changes need time-consuming and need to be done gradually. According to Madzinová et al. (2018), vocational education systems according to the place of implementation is possible to divide as follows: • Vocational training realized in schools (France, Romania, Spain, Finland); • Vocational training realized in a special vocational school (Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sweden); • Job training realized at work (Italy, Ireland, United Kingdom, USA, Israel - the main training places are small businesses and factories that run study workshops together in the regional centre). Apprentices work in the company and 1-3 days a week and they study in the study workshop); • Combined vocational training, where vocational training is the responsibility of companies but it is also the responsibility of vocational schools, such as the dual system of education and training (Germany, Denmark, Austria, Croatia, Hungary, 50
