Great Expectations: VET’s Meaning for Dutch Local Industry

Abstract

After a long period of discussions and mergers, the 1996 Adult and Vocational Education Act introduced a new school type in Dutch secondary vocational education and training (VET): a regional, multi-sector, multi-level and multi-track institution. The name, Regional Education Centre (in Dutch: Regionaal Opleidingen Centrum; ROC), stands for an ambition—that ROCs should respond to a variety of needs of local industries. It was assumed that, in return, industry would commit itself to supporting local ROCs in both its public (training new generations of skilled workers) and private (purchasing post-initial training programmes) capacities. This chapter disentangles the interactions between ‘region building’ by the ROCs and the national government’s responses to the way this process was heading, fuelled by the discrepancies between actual outcomes and the outcomes perceived by the government. We argue that since 1996 a variety of strategies and concepts have been promoted aiming to shape school-industry relations. Within these contextual dynamics, ROCs basically stand for a vehicle for qualifying young people from various backgrounds. Although suggested in the market metaphor as a leading principle in this process, it proved an illusion for ROCs to be capable of delivering tailor-made services to both industry and young and adult students at the same time, performed in the same way and with the same tools.