Well, those are slightly separate concepts I think. I went to a "Realschule", and those still exist. It's a school form that ends after grade 10, where the majo

Well, those are slightly separate concepts I think. I went to a "Realschule", and those still exist. It's a school form that ends after grade 10, where the majority of students moves on into an apprenticeship, to work in either some kind of trade/craft, or low to mid-level white collar work. OTOH, "Gymnasium" is the common path towards A levels and then university. It is, however, also pretty common to go on to do your A levels and then study after Realschule like I did (at a computer science focused "technical high school" (!) for grades 11-13, yet another eccentric thing we have, but I'm a fan). For what it's worth, I do think our society has a comparatively high appreciation for these apprenticeship type jobs. There can be pretty good money in it, often more agency, and a lot of them are obviously needed - far more obviously than most jobs folks study for. Maybe I live in a bubble, but I feel that's appreciated here. All of that technical (!) stuff aside, the word "fachlich" is, from my perspective, mainly used to describe white collar knowledge or skills. I don't think I've heard it in the context of baking, plumbing etc, and I'd say it has a positive connotation, hinting at education and experience. But I'm neither a linguist nor a statistically relevant sample of Germany, so YMMV.