Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T04:06:29.776Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Vocational Education and Productivity in the Netherlands and Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2020

Geoff Mason ,
S.J. Prais  and
Bart van Ark
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The contribution of differences in the Dutch and British education and training systems to the significant Dutch advantage in manufacturing productivity levels is examined in this article. The Dutch schooling system is characterised by high standards in mathematics, the provision of vocational education at ages 14-16 for a third of all pupils, and widespread vocational education at 16+. The proportion of the Dutch work force attaining vocational qualification approaches that of Germany and is well ahead of Britain. Comparisons of productivity, machinery and skills in matched samples of British and Dutch manufacturing plants were carried out in selected branches of two industries—engineering and food-processing. Higher average levels of work force skills and knowledge in the Dutch samples were found to contribute to higher productivity through better maintenance of machinery, greater consistency of product-quality and lower manning-levels (greater work force flexibility, less learning-time on new jobs). The Dutch productivity advantage was greatest in product areas where small- or medium-sized batches are demanded by the market.

Type
Articles
Information
National Institute Economic Review , Volume 140 , May 1992 , pp. 45 - 63
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 National Institute of Economic and Social Research

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

(1) From a letter translated by R F Young, Comenius in England (Oxford, 1932), p.65.

(2) Quoted in an essay by B Suchodolski, Comenius and teaching methods, in C H Dobinson (ed.), Comenius and Contemporary Education: An International Symposium (commemorating the tercentenary of the death of Comenius, Unesco, Hamburg, 1970, p.43; the late Professor Dobinson was SJP's headmaster at King Edward's Grammar School, Five Ways, Birmingham, before Dobinson became Professor of Education at the University of Reading).

(3) A compendium of previous articles in this field, originally published in the National Institute Economic Review, has recently been issued under the title, Productivity, Education and Training : Britain and other Countries Compared (NIESR, December 1989).

(4) The great seventeenth century European educational thinker Comenius (1592-1670) lived in the Netherlands for fourteen years and ‘made a great name for himself by the publication of various books’ on the principles and practice of schooling (see W Rood, Comenius and the Low Countries, Gendt, Amsterdam, 1970, p.13). He visited England only briefly. His main concerns, from our point of view here, were (a) to extend schooling to the whole population (not just to the wealthier classes), and (b) to ensure that schooling was based on substantial practical elements. These views were controversial at that time, and were not unopposed; their great impact on the schooling systems of the European mainland are evident from the Unesco publication cited above.

(5) The Institute's latest statistical comparisons based on Censuses of Production put Germany's output per employee-hour at 19 per cent above that of the UK in 1990; the gap narrowed sharply in the 1980s—from a peak of 51 per cent in 1979—following a heavy ‘shake-out’ of employment in UK manufacturing (Mary O'Mahony, National Institute Economic Review, February 1992). The Institute's census-based comparisons with the Netherlands suggested the latter country was even further ahead—by as much as 44 per cent above Britain in 1988 (B van Ark, Comparative levels of labour productivity in Dutch and British manufacturing, National Institute Economic Review, February 1990, p. 74); about 8 percentage points of that gap is attributable to the Netherlands having more employees in capital-intensive industries than the UK.

(6) Productivity, machinery and skills in a sample of British and German manufacturing plants, by A Daly, D W M N Hitchens and K Wagner, National Institute Economic Review, February 1985.

(7) For the benefit of technically interested readers: the pumps were generally with outlet diameters of about 10-20 cm; the valves were of similar diameter; and the springs were generally made from 2 mm steel wire.

(8) The firms were approached on the basis of trade lists, including classified telephone directories; small craft-bakeries were excluded from our sample of biscuit manufacturers. Initial telephone interviews were held with a considerably larger sample to ensure that those of whom we requested a visit manufactured the main varieties in which we were interested (rather than highly specialised products; eg in biscuit manufacturing we excluded firms making only ice-cream cones). To save travelling costs, the plants selected for visits in Britain were geographically clustered.

(9) In comparing our sample with national statistics, we have taken the industries defined as metal products and mechanical engineering (British SIC 31 and 32, and Dutch industry classification SBI 34 and 35) throughout this paper, though for convenience we refer only to ‘engineering’.

(10) By way of general background: the population of the Netherlands is approximately a quarter that of the UK, and its area about a seventh. There have been few published comparisons between Britain and the Netherlands dealing with education, and none that we know deal with comparisons of manufacturing plants. A small sample inquiry into productivity in Dutch and British hotels, footnoted in the Institute's previous study of German and British hotels (Prais, Jarvis and Wagner, National Institute Economic Review, November 1989, p. 70, n. 21), indicated that Dutch and German hotels were equally efficient in their use of labour, and significantly more efficient than British hotels. The interest of the Dutch system of vocational preparation for Britain was recognised thirty years ago in the Crowther Report 15-18 (Ministry of Education, HMSO, 1959; Appendix III by H A Warren, pp. 498-502); and twenty years ago in a report prepared for the Council of Europe by HM Staff Inspector D Porter, Technical and Vocational Education: Six Area Studies (Strasbourg, 1970, pp. 75-89 on the Dutch system); see also Vocational Education in Five Countries (Further Education Staff College, Coombe Lodge Report, Vol. 19, no. 5, Bristol, 1988, chapter on the Netherlands by L Blokziji, T Knobbout and R Russell, pp. 281-8). An official account in English of Dutch schooling is available in their Ministry of Education document no. 332E, The Dutch Education System (Zoetermeer, 1988); current problems and plans were discussed in a substantial report for OECD prepared by Dutch education officials, Richness of the Uncompleted: Challenges Facing Dutch Education (Ministry of Education and Science, State Printing Office, The Hague, 1989).

(11) See TN Postlethwaite, The bottom half in lower secondary schooling, in Education and Economic Performance (ed. GDN Worswick, Gower, 1985, p.93); and our two articles comparing Britain with Germany and Japan respectively in National Institute Economic Review, May 1985 and February 1987 (also in Compare: A Journal of Comparative Education, 1986, nos. 1 and 2). Scotland has slightly different provisions; where no issue of substance is at stake, we refer for convenience throughout to ‘Britain’ rather than to ‘England and Wales’ (similarly, we omit references to Scotvec when referring to BTEC).

(12) Of those schools known as Junior Vocational Schools (LBO - to be described below), nine-tenths are financed as privately-run schools.

(13) After the age of 16 parents at all schools, ‘privately-run’ and other state-maintained, are required to make a contribution to costs amounting to an average of dfl.1030 a year in 1988-89 per pupil (about £300; there is a relief scheme for parents with several children at school, and for those with low incomes).

(14) The situation has been changed only slightly by the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative which provides funds—out of the Department of Employment's budget—to encourage a more positive approach in schools towards industry, without however leading to anything resembling the specific technical and vocational courses available to secondary school pupils in the Netherlands or France. The traditional attitude in Britain was well expressed in a submission to the Royal Society by the Trades Union Congress at the beginning of the 1980s: ‘The TUC has always opposed any attempt to make the school curriculum ‘more relevant’ by using schools as institutions of narrow vocational preparation. It is not the job of the schools…’ (Science Education 11-18, Royal Society, 1982, p. 13). This however misunderstands the broad foundations of vocational competence that are provided by Continental secondary schools.

(15) Zakboek Onderwijsstatistieken (hereafter ZOW), CBS, 1988, pp. 32-3, 74; those shown there as being in ‘combined grades’ relate to younger ages, and have been re-distributed for the purposes of the present estimates (see ibid., p. 29).

(16) No less than 48 different mixtures of Dutch secondary school-types were listed in a study of some ten years ago, though the largest ten types accounted for 80 per cent of pupils (WJ Pelgrum and THJM Eggen, Tweede Wiskunde Project: Opzet en Uitvoering, TH Twente, 1983, p.25).

(17) See P vd Dool, The Netherlands: Selection for vocational education starts early, Eur. J. Education, 1989, p.127; a more recent survey of vocational schools in the Netherlands and their current problems was published in the Dutch educational magazine School (SDV, The Hague), March 1990.

(18) Not surprisingly, parents tend to be over-optimistic in relation to the type of school initially chosen, and most changes tend to be to a lower category without involving repetition (R J Bosker, The middle school in the Netherlands, Int. J. Educational Res., 1988, p. 498).

(19) The opportunities in Scottish schools for taking Scotvec modules at ages 15 and 16 do not, in practice, amount to anything substantially corresponding to Dutch vocational courses (see the references to classes S3 and S4 by D Weir and L Kydd, The National Certificate and Highers: a case of market forces, Scot. Ed. Rev., May 1991, esp. pp. 15 and 17).

(20) See Netherlands Ministry of Education, Richness (op. cit.), pp.168, 171; the latter figures are from OECD compilations and warrant further examination for comparability of scope.

(21) ZOW, 1988, p. 75. Unemployment rates among unqualified young persons in the Netherlands have been very high, and have no doubt also encouraged longer full-time education.

(22) Descriptions of a number of apprenticeship schemes have been given by BWM Hövels, Arbeidsorganisaties en het Leerling wezen (Ministerie van Sociale Zaken en Werkgelegenheid, The Hague, 1985).

(23) Usually those with C-grades from LBO; for statistics see ZOW, 1988, p. 32.

(24) The high standards attained at Dutch MBO schools were noted at generation ago by Warren (1959), p. 499. A recent comparison by a professor of engineering in France, who had originally qualified in the Netherlands, put the MTS leaving standard as equivalent to the French Bac (F2) plus one year of industrial training; this also supports the view that the BTEC Higher Diploma is the appropriate comparison (see L K J Vandamme, Electrical engineering in the Netherlands education system, Eur. J. Engineering Education, 1990, p. 48).

(25) At HAVO or VWO.

(26) As discussed in Hilary Steedman's analysis of trends in workforce qualifications in France (National Institute Economic Review, August 1990).

(27) See the comment on the brede meddenstand in the seventeenth century by S. Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (Collins, London; Knopf, New York, 1987), p. 174.

(28) See the studies by van Ark (National Institute Economic Review, February and August 1990) and O'Mahony (National Institute Economic Review, February 1992).

(29) Based on Censuses of Production, gross value-added deflated by producer price indexes; latest years from indexes of output and employment linked to most recent published Census.

(30) Based on detailed calculations similar to those published in the study by van Ark, National Institute Economic Review, February 1990, p. 74.

(31) While the present study was in progress, newspapers reported the takeover of the large Dutch biscuit producer Verkade by United Biscuits, a large international concern with its main interests in Britain. For a fuller account of the various pressures affecting the structure of the biscuit industry, see S J Prais, Productivity and Industrial Structure (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 131-2.

(32) Based on average unit-value-ratios applied to value-added per employee (see footnote 30 above), treating all types of biscuit together as a single commodity for this calculation.

(33) The Institute's international comparisons of this industry are currently being extended to Germany and France; it appears so far that quality-differences are of even greater significance for the latter countries, and require the development of explicit measures of the contribution of higher quality to productivity in its fuller sense. For the Netherlands as compared with Britain, a rough indication of the differences in product-mix is provided by the following figures: those varieties that account for the most expensive 15 per cent of the tonnage produced in the Dutch sample accounted for only 5 per cent of the tonnage in the British sample. The top varieties sell at over three times the price of basic varieties in both countries.

(34) C F Pratten, Economies of Scale in Manufacturing Industry (Cambridge, 1971, pp. 77-80, 270) suggested that in bread- baking a doubling of plant-size (from half to full ‘minimum effective scale’) was accompanied by a saving of 15 per cent of total unit-costs including materials (excluding delivery costs), equivalent to 30 per cent of net production costs (net of materials and delivery costs).

(35) The following details illustrate the kind of adjustment required. Both flour and fats have an inherent degree of natural variability which affects the consistency of the dough and its flow characteristics. Standard recipes and automated (often electronic) control provide the starting point. Temperature charts, control-limits and flow meters need to be observed and understood by the oven-operator. Precise dimensions and weight of the product need to be checked. Visual colour checks on the degree of baking have to be carried out routinely. Subsequent adjustment is then sometimes necessary to the dough-mix to provide satisfactory flow through the automated forming machines; and to the speed of the baking conveyor or the oven temperature to compensate for variations in moisture content.

(36) In more detail: 85 per cent in Britain had craft-qualifications, and the remainder had no qualifications; in the Netherlands 40 per cent had technician (MTS) qualifications, and 60 per cent had LTS certificates.

(37) This is similar to the problem noted in the Institute's previous study of clothing production: German manufacturers were able to produce efficiently a greater variety of styles for the upper end of the market, while British producers specialised in long runs of standard styles which fetched lower prices (see H Steedman and K Wagner, NIER, May 1989.)

(38) Higher rates occur in terminal or transitional years: for example, at the end of the final year of Junior Vocational Schools (LBO 4), an average of six pupils per class repeat (see CBS, Statistiek van het Lager Beroepsonderwijs, 1988/89, Scholen en leerlingen; Statistiek van het MA VO, HA VO en VWO 1983/84, In-, door- en uitstroom van leerlingen).

(39) Derived from D A Robitaille and R A Garden, The IEA Study of Mathematics II (Pergamon, Oxford, 1989), p.125, and Appendix G3. The tests were based on multiple-choice questions with five options, so that 20 per cent could obtain the correct answer purely by chance, knowing nothing. The percentages quoted here have been adjusted for guessing (using the conventional simple formula (np — 1)/(n-1), where p is the percentage marked correct, and n is the number of options). It is sometimes said by British experts in apologetica that British pupils compensate for their backwardness in routine calculations of this sort by doing better in ‘problem solving’; but it is difficult to find any clear evidence for this.

(40) Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy, Basic Education (The Hague, 1987), pp. 26-7.

(41) Professor WJ Pelgrum was responsible for the Dutch component of the IEA mathematics comparisons; his comments appeared in the Dutch newspaper, De Volkskrant, 27 January 1990. Dutch mathematical attainments are higher not only for their best pupils (where England has always done well) but also for average and below-average pupils. Lack of space prevents a detailed account here; but our comparisons suggest, broadly, that a 16 year-old at the lower quartile in the Netherlands attains roughly the standard in mathematics of the median pupil in England.

(42) Comparisons were based on City and Guilds mechanical engineering maintenance (course 205) and electrical installation (course 236); and on Dutch Junior Technical School leaving examination papers (mainly at level B, which is reached by most pupils; level C is reached by about a tenth of Dutch LTS pupils, and the standards were judged to be closer to those expected of British BTEC National students). Excellent illustrated textbooks are published specifically for these courses in Dutch Junior Vocational Schools (eg the series published by Educaboek, Culemborg) in accordance with national curricular guidelines, and confirm the general high standards.

(43) A fall of approximately a tenth in the absolute numbers passing final LBO examinations is recorded for the most recent five years (ZOW, 1988, p. 35, and vd Dool, op. cit.); much of this fall can be attributed to a similar proportionate fall in the size of total age-group. On a medium-term view there has been little change; for example, in 1974 there were some 87,000 passes compared with 92,000 in 1987. Nevertheless there remains a longer-term worry amongst employers, especially small and medium-sized employers, who value the vocational grounding provided by the LBO; the concern is that a greater proportion of pupils leave primary schools and move to MAVO, rather than to LBO (this parallels the growth of German Realschulen). The more immediate threat to the future of LBOs is that posed by current legislative changes; if put into practice, these would shorten the length of LBO courses, probably reduce the value of the qualification to employers, and consequently probably reduce the demand by pupils for such schools.

(44) By way of reservation it perhaps needs to be said that about a tenth of all Dutch school-leavers (about a third of all leaving LB0) fail to attain a leaving certificate, or attain only a grade A, which is not highly regarded by employers; nevertheless the substantial contrast with Britain remains. For a discussion of the decline of practical technical subjects taught in Britain at GCSE, see Pre-vocational Schooling in Europe today, by S J Prais and E Beadle, NIESR Research Report (new series no. 1), October 1991.

(45) Official inspectors visit school routinely and inspect the results of international tests to ensure uniformity; but we were told that the effectiveness of this was questionable. See AJM Luijten, Internal versus external assessment in Dutch examinations at 16+ and 18+, Educ. Psych., 1988, p. 237.

(46) Statistiek van het Lager Beroepsonderwijs: Eindexamens 1987 (CBS, 1988), tables 11, 16, 20, 24 and 29 (praktijk, vaktheorie and vaktekenen).