The Dutch VET system is under constant pressure to respond to a changing economy. It has been adapting to fundamental changes in job demands as well as to a strongly growing number of vocational students. The qualification system has been thoroughly restructured and various vocational learning paths and school types (the apprenticeship system and school-based vocational education; initial and adult vocational education) are integrated into a single vocational education and training (VET) system. New content as well as new didactics for vocational schools have been implemented to respond better to the needs of a changing economy and labour market. Regional VET Colleges are developing from industrial training centres into innovative learning centres, in order to prepare students better for working life and lifelong learning. In order to reach that objective, the challenge facing the Dutch system is making qualification structures, educational targets and new educational practices, like problem-based learning, more convergent, rather than the current state of tension or even contradiction. In this context, apprenticeships were rediscovered in the late nineties, but with new learning and working arrangements and with new connections between school and work-based learning. Apprenticeship has become part of an elaborated system of vocational education, which includes two main pathways with different combinations of school and workplace learning. With the expansion of the objectives of vocational education to include effective problem solving on the job and work process knowledge, workplace learning has become more important. However, the quality of workplace learning remains a topic of heavy debate. There are two main issues: the quality of workplace learning and the connection between workplace and school-based learning as part of the integrated development of vocational competences. The first is tackled by updated regulation, by government as well as by national bodies and employer organisations, designed to uphold the quality of training in apprenticeship in terms of content, guidance and assessment. New contentand didactics at school, as well as different and more intensive patterns of interaction between employers and vocational schools, are being developed to improve the connection between learning in school and in the workplace. Working together, employers and vocational schools strive for high-quality outcomes. The aim of this chapter is to describe workplace learning in the Dutch VET. An additional focus is on the quality of the connections between workplace and school-based learning.©Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009.
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