The Changing Role of the In‐company Trainer: an analysis of British trainers in the European Community context

Abstract

'Alternance' training has, since 1980, become a permanent feature of the vocational education and training arrangements for young people in the member states of the European Economic Community (EEC). In this type of training, the trainer or supervisor working with the trainee in the workplace has a crucial part to play-not least in maintaining the balance between the practical and theoretical, on- and off-the-job learning. It is surprising, therefore, that, while much research has been undertaken into formalised off-the-job training, relatively little has looked at company-based training, the roles and functions of work-based trainers, and the skills and qualities such trainers need to possess. A previous EEC-sponsored study, 'The Vocational Trainer of Young People in the United Kingdom' (CEDEFOP, 1983) noted that the size of the population of in-company trainers of young people in the private sector was difficult to quantify but could amount to hundreds of thousands, depending on how the role was defined. So varied were the roles and functions of trainers that it was not possible within the constraints of that original study to profile them. Recent developments emphasising the importance of structured work-based learning and assessment, including the Youth Training Scheme in Britain and new national systems of vocational qualifications, highlighted the need to fill this information gap. For this reason, the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training, Berlin, launched six national studies focussing on in-company trainers of young people. Research teams in France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the United Kingdom and West Germany were commissioned to examine the characteristics and functions of in-company trainers, and the provision made for their training and development, within their respective national contexts. The project brief was to examine trainers engaged in in-company training programmes for young people of at least one year in duration, preferably leading to qualification and/or employment. This led the UK team to focus its study on: (a) the British two-year Youth Training Scheme (YTS); (b) forms of long-duration systematic initial training undertaken outside the YTS,