In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in cross-national comparisons of education and training systems. But how similar or different are national skill systems? To what extent, how, and why do they change? The public and scientific discourse about the modern “knowledge society” seems to imply that they will follow uniform trends rather than take specific pathways. Still, the attractiveness of particular national “models”may change over time, with varying success and different demands put on them. This leads to the following general questions: 1. Isthere one best way of organizing vocational training systems? 2. Howstable are national skill systems over time? 3. If systems are different, do relative advantages and disadvantages change over time? 4. To what extent can the systems be deliberately changed? This chapter analyzes the questions of the reproduction and transformation of skill systems from a sociological perspective by focusing on two particular cases. As a study on contemporary changes in skill systems, it emerges from an historical comparison of the skill formation systems in Germany and Britain sinceWorldWar II, with a special emphasis on developments during the 1990s.As advanced and economically competitive societies, Germany and Britain face, in principle, comparable economic challenges. When looking at these two cases more closely, however, one finds functionally equivalent solutions to similar problems as well as more specific problems and different economic strategies. © Cambridge University Press 2008 and Cambridge University Press, 2009.
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