Italy - Dual Education System in Vocational Training: a success that requires regulatory stabilization

24 November 2017

(ANS - Rome) - In Italy, NEET - or young people not in education, employment or training - represent 20% of the population: a waste of otherwise enormous potential. Vocational Training is an educational path that over the years has demonstrated its effectiveness in acting as a bridge between work and school; on this path, one must include the Dual System, which alternates formal class lessons and working internships inside companies and businesses. For this reason, the Salesians, who have always been active in Vocational Training, hope that the experimental phase will obtain "regulatory stabilization in the government's next budget," as requested by Fr Enrico Peretti, Director General of the National Center of Salesian Institutions – Vocational Training and Continuing Education.

Fr Peretti spoke of the results recently presented to the Italian Senate on "Monitoring on the Experimentation of Dual System of Forma and Confap" for the 2016/2017 academic year.

During the presentation, some data were of considerable importance: in the first year of experimentation, for example, the 150 vocational training centers interviewed involved 3,250 companies with two-thirds of the latter (66%) actively collaborating with the programming and creation of the apprenticeship paths; over half the companies (54%) were wholly "convinced of the opportunity it offered to forming young resources."

In addition, the level of satisfaction recorded by participants in the experiment (operators, businesses, students, families) was high, and reached an average rating of over 75%. And practically everyone (98%) acknowledged that the Dual Education System Experiment represented an opportunity for growth for both the vocational training centers and the young.

"The numbers justify the importance of investing - in a structured fashion, and no longer experimentally - on what is a direct link between the world of formation and the professional relevance of our children in companies," continued Fr Peretti. The model of reference is obviously the German model that has long stabilized the, by now, inseparable relationship between the world of education and the workplace."

In addition to working for the education and formation of young people, the Salesians are also committed to reminding the institutions of the value of the dual education system, which both generates young professionals and represents a way of reactivating Italy's productive and business capacity.

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ANS - “Agenzia iNfo Salesiana” is a on-line almost daily publication, the communication agency of the Salesian Congregation enrolled in the Press Register of the Tibunal of Rome as n 153/2007.

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