I knew I was going to enjoy the Commons Education Select Committee visit to Germany and Switzerland when, on the first day, the German Green Party politician Ulrich Steinbach said he did not understand the "value for money" attitude towards university in the UK.

He didn’t say it to make a political point; he simply found it incomprehensible that we Brits would view universities in this way rather than as institutions to educate our young people and areas of academic excellence.

The view was reflected in Switzerland, too, when we met Sarah Springman at ETH Zurich University. She could not understand our preoccupation with the Teaching Excellence Framework as a way of measuring the value of our universities.

Switzerland has a radical approach to university. If the student has achieved the appropriate level of qualification then they can attend any university they choose without having to sit an entrance exam or pass an interview.

Removing institutional bias 

I recognise the practical difficulties of introducing that system here – their population is only 8 million – but what a wonderful idea. In one stroke, you could remove all institutional bias from a university and open educational opportunity to more people.

Professor Pierre Vandergheynst, of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, talked about how he was redesigning his courses at university to adapt to the future and the revolutionary changes that quantum computing and AI will bring. He said we need to think about "the [unique selling point] USP of being human" – what is it that we can do that artificial intelligence can’t? He redesigned his curriculum to have 50 per cent core understanding and 50 per cent project work – complex tasks involving students from different disciplines working together to develop these skills.

Does our current education system develop these USP skills of being human? Is there a way to promote them further?

Bridges to avoid dead ends

Switzerland has a highly selective system, with 70 per cent of their students going into apprenticeships. Germany has a similar model but has made the radical change in recent years of allowing parents to choose whether they want their child to have an academic or vocational pathway.

Both countries were keen to stress that young people had "bridges" to allow them to change pathways and that there were "no dead ends."

In both countries, I was incredibly impressed with the quality of the apprenticeships. These could last up to four years, and in the end the student was fully trained in their chosen profession. They are highly regulated with sets of standards for each profession.

A 'social duty' to apprenticeships

Any new standards for new professions are jointly decided between the state education system, the IHK (a chamber of commerce to which every business must belong), the businesses themselves and trade unions. They all work in partnership to set salaries for each profession.

In Germany, the IHK acts as a regulator to ensure that each apprentice has a quality experience. They do not grade and "inspect" but instead support the business to improve the experience for the apprentice. Perhaps this model could be adapted to ensure quality apprenticeships in our country, too.

Another stark difference I noted was the attitude of the businesses to taking apprenticeships. The businesses saw it as part of their social "duty" to have apprenticeships and used it to gain prestige in the local community.

At any one time 30 per cent of businesses, including many SMEs, have apprentices. This is not to say that having an apprentice is easy. In both countries, the company must prove that it has trained staff able to deliver workplace-based training, too.

Reliance on a buoyant economy?

The school or college is only there to deliver the theory; the business has to deliver everything else. Considering both countries took students from aged 15 or 16, this places a huge responsibility on the business.

The questions I asked myself were: do our businesses have the same sense of social responsibility, or would they require incentives from government to even consider a similar system? And how much of this system is reliant upon a buoyant economy?

Both Switzerland and Germany were clearly desperate for skilled workers and therefore keen to invest. The companies paid 70 per cent of the costs of training apprentices, knowing that only at Year 3 do they start to see a return on their investment.

I finished the week with more questions than answers.

Apprenticeships cannot be a 'failure route' 

We cannot continue to accept a school system where over 30 per cent of children do not reach the "expected standard" compared with only 4 to 5 per cent in Germany and Switzerland.

Either our examination system is wrong, or our school system is wrong. If we are serious about preparing both our economy and our children for the future, then we cannot continue to allow apprenticeships to be viewed as a “failure route”.

We cannot wait for the “fourth industrial revolution” to change jobs before adapting our education system.

Emma Hardy is the Labour MP for Hull West and Hessle and is a member of the Commons Education Select Committee