<p>Germany has a two-tier system, in some parts of the country it is even three-tier. You may leave full-time education after nine years of school, when you are about 15. In this case you start an apprenticeship, which lasts for three, sometimes even three and a half years. It means you go to vocational school for one or two days a week. For the rest of your time you are trained in a company. At the end you have to pass a written exam and one, where you can show the skills you learnt. That is the reason why many people end up with 13 years of schooling, but in reality they are skilled workers in a trade. If they feel like it they can go back to school after their training and finish high school to go to university. Many of them do so and employers usually like that because they know all parts of the job, not just the academic side of it.
You get a specialized and qualified work force in the end. On the other hand people are so specialized that it is hard to change one’s job, because you have to do the apprenticeship all over again. So the economy is not flexible.
There are positve and negative aspects in either system.</p>