This article seeks to provide a school perspective on the nature and quality of the partnerships which schools form with businesses in order to deliver work placements and workplace learning in Australia. It found that the ability of schools to engage with external partners depended on the ability of school leaders to define and communicate the role of VET within the school and its broader community. This dependence on individuals and leadership is vulnerable to changes in key personnel and the informality of some of the processes and relationships can lead to problems in monitoring, evaluating and replicating programs. Our study shows that a balance is required between carefully documented processes and the flexibility required to operate programs successfully. The study also noted the tension between the perceived needs of the school and those of industry. A successful partnership 1 Corresponding author necessarily requires school flexibility-in the decisions as to what programs should be offered and how work placements and timetabling should be organised.

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School partnerships support the effective provision of Vocational Education and Training(VET) in the senior years of secondary schooling, to a varying degree, in most OECD nations. However, the nature and quality of these partnerships vary considerably from school to school and, indeed, from nation to nation (see Murray and Polesel 2013). Given the role of these partnerships in VET provision in the senior years of schooling, it might be argued that there has been limited discussion about the role and nature of these relationships and the challenges associated with their establishment and long-term sustainability, especially in the Australian context (Allison et al. 2006). This paper explores the emergence of partnerships in a variety of educational and training contexts in Australia and describes the types of partnerships that have been established to respond to the specific needs of students. It also identifies the benefits and challenges associated with the delivery of VET programs through partnerships and the ways in which these partnerships can be developed and sustained to improve VET provision.

Since the 2004 accession to the European Union (EU), Poland, like many other post-communist countries, have gone through a significant process of convergence to the EU institutions, laws and processes. In this process, the European values, policies and institutions have become an important reference point for the legitimacy of major national system reforms. In education, there have been a significant number of reforms aligned with ‘European standards’ as integration with the EU was seen as a priority for Poland’s national interest. This paper is interested in the changing policy discourses that have been defining and legitimising Poland’s education policy objectives, with a particular attention given to the idea of ‘quality education’ and the role of education. In this way, it is also interested in the processes of Europeanisation and de-Europeanisation – turning away from ‘EU-isation’ of policies. The emerging picture from the analysis illustrates the tensions between the neoliberal and populist policy discourses pursued by a variety of Polish governments, including significant policy shifts under the government of the Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS) (Law and Justice) coalition.

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This paper highlights troubling patterns within the Australian School-based Apprenticeships and Traineeships (SBATs) by analysing statistical data of 21,000 of 15 to 19 year old apprenticeship/traineeship learners engaged in Vocational Education and Training in School (VETiS). It confirms the alignment of social groups to certain qualification fields and levels and provides a compelling picture of the learner profile of SBAT including the type of occupations and qualifications being undertaken at school level. In a complex policy environment, where VET in Schools has been assigned the important task of preparing "workforce job-ready" students (Birmingham 2015) for the "high skill and high earning roles our economy demands" (Ley 2014), we argue that the SBAT pathway is not yet adequate to meet these high expectations. It is not an effective apprenticeship pathway as it potentially 'locks-in' already disadvantaged young people to precarious pathways, and reinforces the nature of an already highly gender-segregated Australian labour market. The paper helps to focus attention on endemic weaknesses in the Australian VET system that serve to entrench disadvantage in Australian society.