School Enterprises: Combining Vocational Learning with Production (UNEVOC, 1998, 64 p.): 3. Conclusions and Guidelines: 3.2 Structures of school enterprises

School Enterprises: Combining Vocational Learning with Production (UNEVOC, 1998, 64 p.)

3. Conclusions and Guidelines

		(introduction...)
		3.1 Rough typology of school enterprises
		3.2 Structures of school enterprises
		3.3 Organisation of learning
		3.4 Competency profile, learning outcomes and learning goals
		3.5 Curricular processes
		3.6 Teaching staff
		3.7 Regulatory framework of school enterprises
		3.8 External relations
		3.9 Impact of school enterprises
		3.10 Financial options for school enterprises
		3.11 Mixes of private and public roles
		3.12 Factors that may enhance school enterprises

3.2 Structures of school enterprises

A wide diversity of structures and focus is to be found in programmes of school enterprises, depending on whether production for the market takes place predominantly in an enterprise or in a learning workshop, and whether the learning takes place in a school/ training institute or in an enterprise with training functions. The two contexts - learning workshop and enterprise - should be seen as pure institutional forms with a relatively high degree of functional specialisation, but whose nature changes according to the nature and degree of interaction with the other domain. The key conceptual frame is the interaction between learning and production and its location in the curriculum.

Most school-based programmes at the secondary school level combine learning with production in a learning workshop. The emphasis here is on a combined learning and production place. The production division also serves as a training workshop.

In some schools, experiences with the logistics of production, and the continuous dilemma between pedagogic and economics have led to a separation of types of activities. For example, a distinction is made between productive activities as an integral part of certain subjects and workshops where the emphasis would be on developing skills, and production projects which are separate from the curriculum but still provide clear opportunities to apply what was previous learned in workshops and class.³⁰ Drawing such organisational boundaries, and defining clear objectives, has eased the problem of interference. Training takes place in a training workshop, whereas production takes place in an enterprise, and the two contexts are linked in several ways. The emphasis here is also on the combination of education with production, but production for the market takes place in a separate enterprise attached to the school or training institute.³¹The enterprise serves not only the production of goods and services for the market, but also as a location for application of skills learned in the learning workshops.

³⁰ For example, the schools in Zimbabwe supported by ZIMFEP. Conradie, J.A., 1989
³¹ Greinert, W.-D. and Wiemann, G., 1993