Conference Agenda

This paper will explore the relationship between education policymaking, practice and research in the field of adult literacy in Ireland. It draws on our involvement in a series of research reports completed for the national adult literacy and Further Education and Training (FET) services in Ireland between 2018-2022. Each research project was conducted on a national scale, intending to capture literacy practice in their respective areas of family literacy, numeracy, inclusion of adult learners with intellectual disabilities, and inclusion of adult literacy across FET. This represented a very active period by the national statutory agencies in researching the evidence base of adult literacy to inform governmental strategic planning. It aimed to provide an evidence-base for literacy education to inform emergent policies, in a manner that consulted with and gave voice to the experiences of staff and students at multiple levels, types and sites of adult literacy provision in Ireland. The findings were written and presented as research reports, before being translated into a series of policy briefing papers (NALA, 2022) and forming part of the evidence-base for consultation process for the first National Adult Literacy for Life Strategy, 2021 in Ireland. This paper explores how the socio-cultural and political context of this research influenced how it was able to relate to and influence policy.

Much like other European countries (Assmann & Broschinski, 2021), Denmark has a sizeable group of young people that are neither in education, employment, or training (NEET) (Statistics Denmark, 2023). Denmark simultaneously identifies a lack of vocational professionals resulting in a looming threat of decreased growth (Aarkrog, 2020). At the same time the upper secondary schools struggle with a lack of motivation among students and school refusal (Pless & Katznelson, 2019). These issues became politically intertwined in 2023 as the Minister of Education, Mattias Tesfaye, proposed to make the comprehensive public school more practical and vocationally oriented (Tesfaye, 2023). The proposal was argued to lead to an educational system better accommodating students than is the case today and thus create a more secure future for the individual (Tesfaye, 2023). One of the initiatives in the proposal is the introduction of junior apprenticeships. A junior apprenticeship offers students from grade 7 to 9[1] a reduced school schedule and instead combine school with an internship at a company. The hypothesis is that it will contribute to less school refusal, decrease the risk of students leaving their 9^th grade examinations without plans for further education, and simultaneously prepare students for the future and further education. In this sense, the national proposal seeks to address broader European concerns (Rasmussen & Juul, 2020; Eleveld, Bazzani, De Le Cour & Staszewska, 2022).

Hjørring Municipality has locally experimented with a similar initiative they call prolonged internship for the past four years. The prolonged internship entails students in grade 7 through 9 being able to have as little as an afternoon and as much as multiple days a week where they instead of school go to a local company. The initiative is part of a broader policy in Hjørring Municipality labelled the “Youth Guarantee” (Friche, Enemark & Ydesen, 2021). The policy aims to ensure people under the age of 30 in the municipality avoid a position without education, employment, or training. Hence, it is akin to the European Youth Guarantee (Tosun et al, 2019), but crucially establishes a collaboration between employment and education already at the lower secondary education level. The Hjørring Municipality policy has a constellation of partners from education institutions, the bureaucracy, and companies that guarantee they will take responsibility for young people and helping them on their way (Bolvig, Jeppesen, Kleif, Østergaard, Iversen, Broch-Lips, Jensen and Thodsen, 2019). The prolonged internship is one of the initiatives the partners collaborate on. The aim is, similarly to the recent proposal at the national level, to offer a break from students’ everyday school life, increase students’ motivation, and establish a more secure and certain path for the future at an individual level (Hjørring Municipality, 2023).

This paper therefore takes up the prolonged internship to explore if this is a suitable measure and how this local policy can potentially mitigate national and European issues. The paper is guided by the question: “How are prolonged internships in a Danish municipality enacted and what potential does it have to mitigate European issues in education and employment?”. The paper relies on focus group interviews with students, parents, companies, and the relevant staff surrounding them and explores the question through the concept of policy enactment as an analytical lens.

[1] In the Danish education system tracking occurs quite late in students’ schooling career, namely following the 9^th grade final examinations. This has been the norm since 1975 where the comprehensive public school was unified and means grades 8 and 9 primarily are when students must consider their future education trajectory.