Nowadays, Vocational and Professional Education Training (VPET) aims for the development of professional knowledge, practical skills, and personal growth for academic and career prospects. With sustainable development with the master of skilled workers in trades, a well-structured training system has developed in different countries. Some developed countries such as the United Kingdom, United States, Germany, and Singapore, have developed their training system. These trades have required practitioners to conduct mandatory training before they admit to the trades. In China, a long tradition for the mode of skills transfer from the master to protégé has developed in construction tradesmen. In Hong Kong, starting from the 1950s, a dramatic increase of skilled workers was required for industrial development. At that time, apprentices only needed to acquire basic technical skills and on-job training to fulfil basic job requirements. To enhance the training scheme in Hong Kong, the Government enacted an Apprenticeship Ordinance in 1976 to promote apprenticeship training to young people, regulate the employment of apprentices in designated trades, and supply well-trained skilled manpower for industry development. The apprentice has a job in an industry at a designated trade and studies a complementary course in Vocational Training Council (VTC) for VPET. The Office of the Director of Apprenticeship (ODA) in VTC is statutory to monitor the progress of the apprentices and promote apprenticeship training. To enhance industry collaboration, institutions in VTC such as Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education (IVE) and Youth College (YC) have maintained very close contact with relevant industries for collaboration, schemes including Industry Attachment, Work Integrated Learning, and Workplace Learning and Assessment to current students to apply their professional skills and acquire on-job training skills and industrial development in future careers.

This paper reviews the vocational training and apprenticeship in Hong Kong, discusses the current development of the collaboration of VPET and stakeholders between the institutions, and under the apprenticeship scheme with case studies; and summarises the overall strategies in VPET which can be referenced as a model to stakeholders to enhance the recognition of the industry for future development.