On the Planned Apprenticeship Guarantee for Germany: An Attempt to Reduce the Risk of Social Exclusion During the Transition from School to VET?

At the end of 2022, the German government published a draft for an apprenticeship guarantee. One measure proposed in the draft is to fund apprenticeships for those young people who do not find an apprenticeship despite actively searching. It is assumed that around 7,000 young people would start such extra-company training each year. This number seems rather low compared to the more than 200,000 young people who start preparatory courses every year. In the 18-34 age group, the risk of unemployment is five times higher if a person has not obtained a vocational or higher education qualification – this goes along with other forms of social exclusion. The paper raises the question of whether such an apprenticeship guarantee, due to its small scale, could only bring about minor changes for the disadvantaged, or whether it could represent a paradigm shift on a conceptual and political level, as it aims to integrate disadvantaged young people directly into the regular system instead of separating them from the rest