Every year in late summer, many young people in Germany start their vocational education and training in the dual apprenticeship system. The more than 300 training occupations differ in many respects. Vocational education and training programs with higher cognitive requirements offer greater opportunities to acquire additional competencies that are likely to be more valuable in the labor market later on.

In a new study, DSS researcher Paula Protsch and her colleagues Anett Friedrich and Daniela Rohrbach-Schmidt from the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) examined who has access to cognitively more demanding training occupations. 

The analyses based on data from the National Education Panel Study (NEPS) show that predominantly young people with intermediate or upper secondary school-leaving certificates enter these training occupations, especially if they have higher cognitive abilities. For young people with intermediate secondary school-leaving certificates, access is also more likely with higher parental socioeconomic status.

The results indicate that access to cognitively more demanding training occupations and the advantages they offer throughout the life course are primarily available to those who have already been more successful in school. At the same time, it should be emphasized that some people with first school-leaving certificates (depending on the federal state, this is also referred to as lower secondary school-leaving certificates) also get a corresponding training place and thus are given a new opportunity to develop their cognitive learning potential. 

However, as this opportunity is rather rare, the overall results suggest that school-leaving certificates and selection processes based on them can act as institutional barriers, slowing down young people's career development even if they possess comparatively high cognitive abilities.