The high school diploma in the new “Made in Italy” course of study becomes a concrete reality thanks to the dual apprenticeship employment contract. Starting in November, 22 students in the fourth mechanical production class at Ipsia “Einaudi Scarpa” in Montebelluna will be able to earn a high school diploma, combining traditional classroom hours with others carried out directly in the company and thus in a real working context.
The initiative will be presented to students, families and businesses on Saturday, October 5, at 10:30 in the Ipsia’s Aula Magna at Via Biagi 6 in Montebelluna. A project launched by the institute together with Confartigianato Imprese Marca Trevigiana and Confartigianato Imprese AsoloMontebelluna, which after the signing of about 50 work contracts last year with students who are in the fifth grade, is now proceeding with fourth graders.
The dual apprenticeship project, explains school principal Massimo Ballon, goes to break the cultural bias in young people and their families that considers an apprenticeship path to be low-level. The dual apprenticeship experience, on the other hand, leads to a higher level of awareness of what the world of work is in relation to the aptitudes of the young people, fostering an orientation of young people toward the choice of the professional path they want to take, and represents a “generational” investment in the development of the territory to which these young people belong.
It is no coincidence that this model has achieved good success in northern European countries. In particular, in laboratory and practical subjects, thanks to the dual apprenticeship, students will have the opportunity to train “on the job”. Other hours of the contract will be work during times when school is out, all of which will be useful for earning a first salary and opening up a contributory position for retirement at a very young age.
The added value is being able to learn directly from the owners of the companies, true master craftsmen, stresses Oscar Bernardi, president of Confartigianato Imprese Marca Trevigiana, measuring themselves on state-of-the-art equipment, machinery and processes, which of course school laboratories can never reproduce. This path also helps the young people in their motivational growth and we hope it will help them discover in them passions and further motivation related to the subjects of the professional course of study they have chosen. Dual apprenticeship also makes vocational colleges more attractive. Today, in fact, only 18% of young people enroll in these institutes, much preferring high schools (44%) and technical institutes (38%).
Several companies in the Asolo and Montebelluna area have applied to host students, allowing for often “zero-kilometer” pairings between the student house and the business location. We focused a lot on work safety, points out Fausto Bosa, president of Confartigianato Imprese AsoloMontebelluna, on which we worked hard in the co-design phase, demanding standards from the member companies. The association also took on the responsibility of training students directly in the classroom on business risks, so they could present themselves in the workplace with the proper preparation.
