CESI participates in CONFSAL conference on education for professional development

The conference was opened by Silvia Costa, Italian MEP and Chair of the European Parliament Committee on Culture and Education.

Conference opening by MEP Silvia Costa

In her introductory words, Ms Costa underlined the risk of considering school education as a mere service for the labour market. She admitted that the skills taught by the educational systems need to be adapted to the needs of the labour markets and that there is “a need for a deeper and better dialogue between institutions and employers”. However, she stressed that regardless of this, education must always play an important role in shaping high quality cultural backgrounds within the citizenry.

CONSAL Secretary General Marco Paolo Nigi also underscored the crucial function which teachers play in teaching youngsters to be skilled workers on the one hand and conveying values on the other.

Education: Reconciling labour market skills needs with competences in values

CESI Secretary General Klaus Heeger followed up on this. Making reference to the European Commission’s current initiative entitled ‘A new skills agenda for Europe’, he stressed that education must necessarily take into account developments that change skills needs on the job markets (such as digitalisation) but that the teaching of fundamental democratic values should also play an important role in education. Losing track of the latter might contribute to radicalisation within societies, he added.

ScholarJobs: A best practice example to raise young people’s employability

At the heart of the conference was the presentation by Salvatore Piroscia, Director General CONFSAL’s member CONFSAL-form, on ScholarsJob, an Italian national-level project to raise young people’s employability by means of apprenticeships.

The ScholarJob project has also been presented as a best practice on dual apprenticeships at a previous meeting of CESI’s internal member’s committee on education (TC EDUC).

All conference material can be accessed on CONFSAL’s website (available in Italian language only). A selection of videos is also available on YouTube.