© Wikipedia
27. 07. 12. - 14:11
Almost every fifth apprentice fails their exam
Last year 57,511 apprentices took their final exams which 10,071 of them failed.
In 23 professions the dropout rate was above 30 per cent, mostly in commercial and handicraft jobs as well as in tourism.
Apprentices in banks and insurances stood out positively with 92.4 per cent of graduates passing the first time.
The drop-out rate has risen continually in the last 30 years and only about 4,000 of the roughly 10,000 apprentices who failed their exams in 2011 took them up again which means that roughly 4,000 gave up after the first attempt.
Those who don’t take the exams in the first place do not appear in any statistics. Their number is estimated between 3,000 and 10 per cent annually. The chamber of workers (AK) and the chamber of labour (WKÖ) want to integrate these cases into the statistics.
The final exams are not compulsory for apprentices but there are wage differences between those who had taken them and those who have not.
Edith Kugi-Mazza, the chamber of workers’ specialist in apprentice matters said that it was important to motivate apprentices to take their exams for otherwise their career was bound to stop short sooner.
She added that it was hard to tell why the drop-out rate was so high and stressed that every profession had to be monitored separately.
