Last May 16thin Milan, the Italian Association of HVET (EQF5) providers (Rete ITS Italia) had its Annual Conference, chaired by Alessandro Mele, President and CEO of Cometa Network – EfVET Member-, and Melania Rizzoli, Lombardy Regional Secretary for VET and Labour.
COMETA Formazione (Italy)
Level 5, for the past 10 years, has been showing excellent results in terms of placement (more than 80% after 6 months), innovation (owing to a strong cooperation with the business sector) and internationalization, leading to general agreements with Universities in Europe, Canada and US for an effective progression of studies (EQF6 and 7).
Melania Rizzoli welcomed the delegates and gave a keynote on the policies in favour of the development of level 5 in Lombardy: today it is the Region setting the path in the growth of a system of Technological Campuses able to provide not only EQF5 education and training but also programs for digitalization, scientific research and facilities for start-ups incubation. This strategy, promoted by Rete ITS Italia found a positive reaction also by the National institutions, represented by Salvatore Giuliano (Secretary for HVET), Cristina Grieco (State-Regions Committee for Education and VET), Antonella Zuccaro (Higher Education Agency) and Paolo Carnazza (Ministry of Labour and Social Policies).
In the roundtable on Internationalization, different speakers offered their point of view on the relevance of this system: Raffaele Trapasso (OECD) outlining the importance of EQF5 to fill the current skills mismatch; Fabiola Riobe (USA Association for International Development of Community Colleges CCID) on the positive effects of internationalization; Thulani Xhali (NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences) describing the School-Enterprise approach developed by Stenden; Paola Battiston (Seneca College Ontario) underlining the link between Training and Applied research in Canadian colleges; and Leonardo Lorusso (delegated by the Ministry of Education to the European institutions) sharing a framework of the current European policies on VET.
A second roundtable focused on the crucial contributions provided by different stakeholders, including business associations (Gianni Brugnoli, Confindustria), companies (Francesco Baroni, Gi Group and Alessio Ciardini, IT Partner Italia), trade unions (Ivana Veronesi, UIL) and banking (Marco Morganti, Banca Intesa).
Alessandro Mele gave a conclusive keynote focused on the main results the system has reached so far and on the next steps in terms of the development of the system. In particular, the strategy of internationalization is a core issue making the system as a whole and the single organizations open to further cooperation at European level and beyond.
For more information on Rete ITS Italia: paolo.nardi@puntocometa.org).
