Paradoxes in Danish Vocational Education and Training

All vocational education and training schools in Denmark are required to launch retention initiatives and report yearly on their efforts to increase retention and the completion rate of their students. This article argues that the structural conditions and incentive structure around VET produces teaching practices in VET that create unmotivated, weak students and unintentional push-out effects. Further, it is suggested that the marketization of education has a profound effect on the practice in VET such that good education has come to be more associated with retaining all students in the VET schools and less about developing good teaching practices.