A Critical Analysis of the Apprenticeship Discourse on the Workplace Experiences of Trainees Attending Vocational Training Centres

Vocational Training Centres (VTCs) are one of the two types of secondary-level training schools in Türkiye. As a result of a series of recent regulations VTCs enrolment has increased, and VTCs have been positioned as a significant player in vocational training to meet skilled or semi-skilled labour demand of different sectors. Over four hundred and twenty thousand students are currently attending the centres. Viewed as the best way to strengthen the link between vocational education and employment opportunities, VTCs have recently faced intense criticism for allegedly legitimizing child labour and causing child work-related homicides. As a result, VTCs has started to be questioned along with the paradigm on which they are based. To hear from the trainees themselves what exactly is going on in VTCs, a fieldwork was carried out. During the fieldwork VTCs in two different industrial zones (OSTİM and Şaşmaz) in Ankara were visited, and thirteen apprentices were interviewed by employing a qualitative method. In this framework the data were generated to analyze if this type of vocational training can be seen as a form of child labour and test the argument that work-related homicides are result from trainees themselves.