The Made in Italy high school is welcome. But it is not what the fashion system needs to bridge the gap between professional requirements and the supply of skilled workers. “I have had the opportunity to discuss it with Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara,” said Giovanni Brugnoli (pictured), vice president of Confindustria with responsibility for Human Capital, “and I trust that he will listen to our requests”.
The priority of technical training
“The ambassadors of Italian excellence, those who will be trained in the Made in Italy high schools (which have the intention of graduating managerial figures as a priority, ed.) are fine. But our companies,” continues Brugnoli, “need technical profiles. For this reason, if the priority is for the course of study to be of the high-school type, then the possibility of a Technical High School should also be considered. The Classical and Scientific high schools already have many addresses, we can at least consider creating a new one”.
Brugnoli spoke at the press conference organised precisely on the subject of training needs by the Education Committee of Confindustria Moda. “A manufacturing country like ours should have an agenda until 2050,” he added, “which successive governments at Palazzo Chigi carry forward with minor corrections. Instead, in my seven years in office, I have already worked with 11 ministers and each time it feels like starting over”.
Confidence in the Government
The challenge of training is of great value to Italian manufacturing, because the lack of skilled labour puts companies in a difficult position today, but the demographic decline threatens generational turnover in the medium term. “We need STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics, ed.) graduates, on which there is great competition, also from the public administration”.
In this sense, Brugnoli welcomes the decree that Minister Valditara is working on to make it possible for technicians from companies with Co.Co.Co. contracts to be included in the ITS teaching staff: “This is excellent news. It is a win-win measure. Schools will benefit from skills in the field that professors do not have. While the companies can introduce themselves to the students, direct them towards apprenticeships, steer them along the training path and recognise the talent among them in advance”.
Not only
The dialogue of the vice president of Confindustria with the government is not limited to this. “With the minister, I also talked about the need for investments in mobility, to meet the needs of families. As well as investments in school buildings, because their improvement attracts attention and conveys the idea of dynamism”. Brugnoli also warned Valditara about some suspicious movements. “I suggested severity with regard to the expansion of ITS foundations”, he concluded, “since the Draghi government allocated funds of 1.5 billion euros, the network has been expanding. This is no accident. The risk is that when the funding runs out in 2028, many ITS foundations will close, and people will say that it is our fault and the fault of politics”.
