The purpose of this chapter is to examine how vocational education and training at upper secondary level (VET) contributes to social justice in education. It does so by comparing the two most differing Nordic VET systems, those of Sweden and Denmark. The chapter examines the historical trajectories of VET in the two countries from the 1970s until today. It examines political reforms to manage two key challenges for VET, on the one hand the challenge of providing direct access to employment and on the other hand the challenge of providing access to higher education. The chapter demonstrates how the organisation and governance of upper secondary VET in the two countries contributes to social justice in different ways. It finds that the key aims of securing social inclusion and employment of all young people and at the same time securing equal opportunities for progression to higher education constitute a basic dilemma for education policy. Education policies in Sweden and Denmark represent two different answers to this dilemma, and the chapter considers the strengths and weaknesses of these answers. The reasons for the limited success of recent reforms are explored, and some of the opportunities for the future development are considered. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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