Vocational education and training - VET

While countries share goals and challenges, their VET systems are diverse, shaped by socioeconomic contexts and traditions. Information on VET’s main features, its role and status, are a prerequisite to understanding developments and learning from another country.

One of the most comprehensive youth welfare studies, Youth in Iceland – upper secondary schools, has shown that around half of the surveyed upper secondary learners (49%), regardless of their current study programme, think that vocational studies would suit them better than general education. This seems illogical, given that 85% of those who enter upper secondary education (age 15) select general education (matriculation programmes), while  VET enrolment is only 13% (Statistics Iceland, 2018). Most learners would like their studies to have more electives.