Switzerland in my case. It's quite similar, but with some extended vocational university options compared to Germany ('Fachhochschule'). Anyways, the way it generally works for most professions (and ~75-80% of population actually go through this route, rather than going straight to academia) is as follows:
* start apprenticeship at 16 for 3-4 years; 3-4 days per week of being embedded in a company as apprentice, 1-2 days of staying in school
* at the end of apprenticeship you do a test, both theoretical and practical. your 'apprentice master' (Lehrmeister) is judging your practical skills in form of an apprentice project. Passing that you're the equivalent of journeyman.
* you can now either start working full time, or you go back to school for 1y to get the federal professional maturity test ('Berufsmatura'). This allows you to enter any higher vocational school in your field in the country.
* from here you go on to either do a vocational university, or you could even take another test and go full on academia (say to ETH Zurich, University, whatever). That gives you the equivalent of BSc or MSc, depending on where you go and how long you stay.
* On top of the bologna titles, there is also the 'federally certified' titles. Say you wanna be a certified construction manager, you go do a federal certificate and become one of ~2500 people in the country with that title. It's highly sought after and a sign of quality. Think of it like professional master titles given by the French state, if you reach that you should never have to worry finding a job. You'll generally be >30y old at that point.