Apprenticeship: giving priority to the least qualified.

Summary Apprenticeship greatly increases the professional integration of young people with low qualifications. On the other hand, its effectiveness is practically nil for the most highly qualified. In spite of this, work-study programs are developing mainly in higher education, to the detriment of the lowest levels of qualification. Far from allowing apprenticeship to play a role as a social elevator, its expansion in higher education reproduces and even accentuates inequalities. Public support must therefore be concentrated where it is effective and equitable, i.e. in the second cycle of secondary education. This is an essential objective in France, where 120,000 young people leave the school system each year with, at best, the brevet des collèges. To achieve this, it is necessary to change the financing of work-study programs and the governance of vocational education. This is what this book demonstrates.