PARIS: Prime Minister Edouard Philippe on Friday outlined a revamp of France’s apprenticeship system in the hope of getting more young people into work, as companies struggle to find skilled labour. Employers welcomed the plans, which would give firms more control over a system they say is ill-adapted to their needs although they partly finance it through a special payroll tax. The current system gets bogged down because it suffers from being too complex,” Philippe told journalists. Under the plan, companies and unions – instead of civil servants at the Education Ministry – will jointly define qualifications needed for vocational training courses. The government wants to increase pay for apprentices by 30 euros a month while publishing how successful each programme is in winning them jobs. More than one in five young people is out of work, a much higher proportion than the overall jobless rate of 9.7 percent.
Apprenticeships are much more common in northern Europe. About a third of upper-school students are enrolled in such programmes in Germany compared to only 5 percent in France, according to OECD data.
