Sustainable Policy Transfer in Vocational Education—The Case of Social Dialogue and Apprenticeship in Slovenia

Response to Reviewer 1

1. Summary

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript and thank you for your kind words. Please find my responses below and the corresponding revisions/corrections highlighted/in track changes in the re-submitted files.

2. Questions for General Evaluation

Reviewer’s Evaluation

Response and Revisions

Does the introduction provide sufficient background and include all relevant references?

Yes/Can be improved/Must be improved/Not applicable

Are all the cited references relevant to the research?

Yes/Can be improved/Must be improved/Not applicable

Is the research design appropriate?

Yes/Can be improved/Must be improved/Not applicable

Are the methods adequately described?

Yes/Can be improved/Must be improved/Not applicable

Are the results clearly presented?

Yes/Can be improved/Must be improved/Not applicable

Are the conclusions supported by the results?

Yes/Can be improved/Must be improved/Not applicable

3. Point-by-point response to Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments

Line 36 “the European Alliance for Apprentice in 2013” should be “the European Alliance for Apprenticeships - revised

 Line 37 “collective skill formation system” is missing article (“a collective…) - revised

Line 131 – might need to briefly explain laggard - revised

Line 145 – could a brief explanation be given as to what ‘anticipation tools’ are, perhaps including any existing examples. Is this research? – revised: I added a short explanation and a reference.

Some sentences are long and could be broken for clarity (particularly those over 40 words). Thank you. The article will be proofred by a professional language editor.

Why is page number 562 included in Line 151, but no other references use this? It is redundant, than you for noticing.

Line 156 has a statement that underpins your argument, but has a 25 year old reference. Anything more up to date available? There are many. I added a very recent one.

Line 219 not sure about the hyphen after dual. Does it need a space after the word, or perhaps just replace with a comma. Thank you. It is redundant.

Line 224…what is a Riga deliverable? I added the reference – a policy text which – among other – promotes work-based learning.

Line 230. I would remove the em dash as its superfluous - done

Some sections repeat ideas (e.g., policy transfer’s dependence on context is stated several times in slightly different forms). Thank you for this obervation – I have deleted a few parts of the last paraghaph of the 3. chapter.

Line 395…please offer brief explanation of the meaning of f, f%, M - explained

The role of the researchers in co-developing codes and frameworks is good but could benefit from a short note on how inter-coder reliability or consensus was ensured – I added a note on the process.

There’s a slight reliance and repetition of “participants agreed” and “participants called for”. You could vary the phrasing for conciseness. Thank you for noticing – revised.

Line 505 Funding proved to be one another very challenging obstacle – delete ‘one’ - deleted

Line 523 is fairly emphatic but might be contestable…can you say ‘proves’ or is better to state that the study ‘indicates’? I added »indicates«

Line 542 ‘to better support to’ delete second ‘to’ I couldn't find the part you refer to, but the article will be proofred

These five factors might better be presented as a list or table so they stand out better, though I appreciate there are discursive points made about them, so organise it how you wish. I have made a list.

Comment regarding the English language: The English could be improved to more clearly express the research

The article was proofred and edited by an international company Scribendi (https://www.scribendi.com/). I will enclose the proof.

Response to Reviewer 2

1. Summary

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find the detailed responses below and the corresponding revisions/corrections highlighted/in track changes in the re-submitted files.

2. Questions for General Evaluation

Reviewer’s Evaluation

Response and Revisions

Does the introduction provide sufficient background and include all relevant references?

Yes/Can be improved/Must be improved/Not applicable

Are all the cited references relevant to the research?

Yes/Can be improved/Must be improved/Not applicable

Is the research design appropriate?

Yes/Can be improved/Must be improved/Not applicable

Are the methods adequately described?

Yes/Can be improved/Must be improved/Not applicable

Are the results clearly presented?

Yes/Can be improved/Must be improved/Not applicable

Are the conclusions supported by the results?

Yes/Can be improved/Must be improved/Not applicable

3. Point-by-point response to Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments 1: Focus on “conditions”, not outcomes. The study’s aim is to surface contextual conditions and challenges; it doesn’t track hard outcomes like completion, employment, wages, or quality metrics.

Response 1:

I agree with this comment. The article indeed aims to reflect upon the contextual conditions and shed light on the factors preventing Slovenia to develop and sustain apprenticeship in VET. It is not about the outcomes of such introduction. Some of the outcomes were monitored, studied and evaluated during the whole research, but this article focuses on one of the research problems, that is the understanding of the reasons behind the challenges. This is also the reason why I chose the interpretative methodological approach and use it to reflect upon an abundance of quantitative, but mostly qualitative data obtained in the whole research. I tried to emphasize this idea in the chapter 6 (Research Problem and Methodology). 

Comments 2: Methodology lights on inference. Priority is given to qualitative work and triangulation; the quantitative side is limited to descriptive stats and χ², with no causal design to attribute effects.

Response 2: I agree. This comment is related to the first one. I hope I managed to revise the methodology section (chapter 6) in a way to better explain my purpose and the whole research design.

Comment 3: Sampling/reporting opacity. Figure 1 sketches three phases and lists participants (numbers in parentheses), but response rates, inclusion/exclusion criteria, and a reproducible sampling frame aren’t reported in that description.

Response 3: The study included the full population of schools participating in the apprentice scheme in Slovenia: in the first phase was a pilot phase, so their number was small. But also in the second phase their number was not significantly higher. So, we could conduct interviews and focus groups with all schools (school heads and organizers of practices) and all relevant social partners and the ministries’ representatives. I have additionally emphasized that in the article. I have added the full numbers of the apprentices during the 3-year pilot period and the number of companies providing training places for the apprentices. Comparing the numbers on the Figure 1 (research design) and the explanation below will demonstrate the reader the high responsive rate among apprentices and company representatives. In the second and third phase of the study we only conducted interviews and focus groups and each time included the representatives of all stakeholders. Since their numbers are small, quantitative surveys would not be viable.

Comment 4: Strong claim, thin quantification. It’s asserted that even under excellent conditions apprentices “cannot achieve all the prescribed learning outcomes”, but no accompanying rate-of-attainment or gap analysis is presented alongside that claim.

Response 4: This claim is not about the attainment rates, but it is about the structure of the VET programs. In other words, it is more a conceptual than an empirical issue. I have revised subchapter 7.3. and I hope I manage to make my point more clearly.

Comment 5: Governance evidence leans on perceptions. Unions are described as the “weakest link”, chambers in a minority, and ministries short on capacity—largely from stakeholder accounts—without paired indicators (e.g., attendance, voting shares, staffing ratios).

Response 5: The fact that no numerical indicators are included is the result of the research methodology used. Our focus was not so much on quantifying indicators but on the mentality of the stakeholders, their ways of perceiving and understanding different issues related to apprenticeship and social partnership, and also perceiving their role and responsibility in the processes. This is why I explained (chapter 7.1) in what way and why the unions’ role is weak, and show why and how representatives of the chambers and ministries see their power and place in social dialogue.

Comment 6: Finance flagged as unsustainable, but uncosted. The funding section identifies EU-dependence and limited private input, yet lacks budget series, per-apprentice costs, or incentive modelling to size the problem.

Comment 7: Generalizability is narrow. The design and questions are tightly anchored to Slovenia’s context; there’s no external validation or heterogeneity analysis across sectors/regions/firm sizes.

Comment 8: No causal counterfactual. Without pre–post, difference-in-differences, matching, or RDD, it’s not possible to estimate policy effects versus background trends.

Comment 9: Normative conclusion lacks “anchors”. The discussion asserts the dominance of “school logic”, but provides no comparative metrics of decision power, resource flows, or committee composition to anchor that claim.

Response 6-9: I will respond to the comments from 6-8 together, because they belong to the same issue.

My response is like the response 5: in the article the main issue is the issue of understanding how apprenticeship and social partnership (including its financing) should be conceptualized and how responsibilities and tasks should be shared, and how the current processes are understood among the stakeholders. The article is not about the measurable effects of the policy. As far as financing is concerned, two major obstacles emerged: one is the reluctance of the government to provide sustainable sources of financing some processes that are necessary for the apprenticeship to work according to the Law on apprenticeship; the second is the prevailing mentality among the companies, chambers, schools and ministries that VET, including apprenticeship, is mostly public and educational concern. This mentality hinders further development of apprenticeship as conceptualized in collective skills formation system because in collective skills formation system the idea of sharing (financial) responsibility between public sphere and private sphere is essential. Hence our proposal that Slovenia should change the course of development – we could me more successful if we worked towards establishing participatory model of social partnership and not a collective one. This is more in line with the Slovenian context (the “soil” of the country).

And, to respond to the Comment 7 (Generalizability is narrow): I would argue that Slovenian experience is valid also for other contexts (for other countries) in Europe and for the European policy on VET – it clearly shows that it is wrong to force the introduction of a collective skills formation systems to all European countries because it will not work: a lot of resources will be spent, but the outcome will not be sustainable. I tried to make this point clearer in the Conclusion.

Comment 10: Editorial artefact. A placeholder citation “Author, 2009” remains, which weakens traceability.

Response 10: This reference is a chapter presenting my historical analysis of the reform which took place during the socialist period. This is the only study conducted on this topic, so I cannot provide additional references. It is difficult to avoid self-citation in Slovenia, because we have a small research community in the area of history of education and comparative education.

4. Response to Comments on the Quality of English Language

Point 1: The reviewers indicate the English is fine and does not require any improvement.

Response 1: