AS THE football World Cup approaches, so too does the prospect of another drubbing by Germany. The England team crashed out of the last tournament, in 2010, in a humiliating defeat to its old rival. Sports fans, however, are not the only Britons looking to learn from the Germans. So are many in Westminster, for whom the 2008 financial crash was the economic equivalent of that 4-1 defeat in Bloemfontein. By broad agreement, the country needs to move away from finance and towards the sort of sturdy manufacturing industries in which Germany specialises.

British ministers strive especially to emulate their near neighbour’s apprenticeship system. Adopting what David Cameron, the prime minister, calls a “Germanic approach”, they have increased by half the budget subsidising workplace training and introduced £1,500 ($2,500) grants for small businesses to take on their first apprentice. The number of people starting apprenticeships in England has duly soared (see chart). A similar pattern is evident in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, where devolved administrations run their own skills policies.

But all is not nearly as rosy as headline figures suggest. Apprenticeships in Germany typically last three years, involve at least one day a week of classroom teaching and are rigorously assessed. The best English apprenticeships—especially at manufacturing giants like Jaguar Land Rover—do much the same. The majority do not.

Prominent evidence of this emerged two years ago, with the revelation that one in ten new English apprenticeships were created at a single supermarket chain, Morrisons. The firm was using a government subsidy to put 52,000 of its staff through six-month courses in operating cash tills and other basic tasks—hardly the technical training that ministers had in mind. This is not an isolated case. Most new apprenticeships are in the same category as the Morrisons scheme (level two, supposedly equivalent to the GCSE exams taken at 16). Fewer are at level three (equivalent to the school-leaving exams taken at 18) and hardly any are level four—equivalent to degrees.

So perfunctory are many apprenticeships that they not only fall short of the government’s Teutonic aspirations but are of little use at all, says Lee Elliot Major of the Sutton Trust, an education charity. They waste public money, do not encourage firms to invest in training and do nothing to plug a yawning skills gap. Between 2011 and 2013 investment in training by employers fell by £2.4 billion, and the number of job vacancies without qualified applicants rose from 91,000 to 146,000.

Why is England struggling to import the German apprenticeship model? It turns out that good wishes and state cash are not enough to overcome several big differences between the two countries.

In Germany powerful Chambers of Commerce police the terms and conditions of apprenticeships. England has no equivalent bodies, so standards vary wildly. Over 18,000 types of apprenticeship exist. In many cases, these are existing schemes rebranded by employers in order to benefit from government subsidy. Charlie Mullins, a plumbing magnate, says this “cynical degradation” weakens the reputation of rigorous apprenticeships.

And English employers are less convinced than their German counterparts of the business case for taking on apprentices. The subsidy, which covers training costs, is supposed to change this. But according to Doug Richard, an entrepreneur who led a government review, it can have the opposite effect. Training is bought by the state at a fixed price and from a limited number of providers. Far from habituating employers to investing in training, it excludes them from the commissioning process.

Finally, England’s education system provides no clear vocational track. As a result, apprenticeships are often seen as make-work for those not capable of completing school. This makes the schemes still less attractive to employers.

Politicians are trying to improve matters. The government is experimenting with giving business associations a role in upholding standards. It is also considering Mr Richard’s proposal to let employers pick their own training providers and negotiate prices. The opposition Labour Party has pledged to offer a German-inspired “Technical Baccalaureate” in schools. The party is looking at classifying only placements at level three or above as apprenticeships. Such ideas are sensible. Though poor-quality apprenticeships do nobody much good, Britain has an acute skills gap, particularly in technical fields like engineering. Good workplace-based training can help close it.

And ministers have cause for solace in their struggles to catch up with Germany’s top-notch apprenticeship system. True, England’s good universities suck up talented school-leavers, leaving fewer for vocational schemes. Its strong services sector tends to reward people with general skills, lowering the perceived value of specific, technical ones. And its flexible labour market enables employees to move around more freely, making it harder to pin them down for extended periods of training. The Germany-fanciers of Whitehall—perhaps without noticing it—are running up against their country’s own strengths.