Apprenticeship

Apprenticeship is a system for training a new generation of practitioners of a trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study (classroom work and reading). Apprenticeships can also enable practitioners to gain a license to practice in a regulated occupation. Most of their training is done while working for an employer who helps the apprentices learn their trade or profession, in exchange for their continued labor for an agreed period after they have achieved measurable competencies. Apprenticeship lengths vary significantly across sectors, professions, roles and cultures. In some cases, people who successfully complete an apprenticeship can reach the "journeyman" or professional certification level of competence. In other cases, they can be offered a permanent job at the company that provided the placement. Although the formal boundaries and terminology of the apprentice/journeyman/master system often do not extend outside guilds and trade unions, the concept of on-the-job training leading to competence over a period of years is found in any field of skilled labor. There is no global consensus on a single term for apprenticeship. Depending on the culture, country and sector, the same or similar definitions are used to describe the terms apprenticeship, internship, and trainee-ship. The latter two terms may be preferred in the health sector. One example is internships in medicine for physicians and trainee-ships for nurses – and western countries. Apprenticeship is the preferred term of the European Commission and the one selected for use by the European Center for the Development of Vocational Training (CEDEFOP), which has developed many studies on the subject. Some non-European countries adapt European apprenticeship practices. The system of apprenticeship first developed in the later Middle Ages and came to be supervised by craft guilds and town governments. A master craftsman was entitled to employ young people as an inexpensive form of labour in exchange for providing food, lodging and formal training in the craft.