At a time of great uncertainty "one must not stop working for the future and prepare young people remains an unavoidable commitment in respect of which businesses must not fail: it is a sign of hope that, in the Its, finds the concreteness of a job". Said the Vice President for Industrial Relations Maurizio Stirpe in an interview for the Guide Its of the 24 Hour Suna journey through 12 of Italy's regions and production districts to describe the best 'on-the-job' training experienceswith interviews with about forty companies, multinationals and SMEs of the Made in Italy.

The Higher Technical Institutes are Foundations in which companies, research centres/universities, the education and training system participate. The first Italian experience of professionalising tertiary education linked to the production system and the labour market. "The cultural challenge that the Its institutes present to the Italian education system is precisely in opening up to the world of work - commented the Vice President for the Guide Its John Brugnoli. It lies in recognising that even there is a training capacity in companies that can complement educational processes and that can be usefully activated for the benefit of the new generations. More collaboration is needed with schools, universities, vocational training centres, technology hubs, and local authorities. We need full recognition of the value of the Its educational model. In this way they can increasingly become " Made in Italy Academies"a boast of Italy in the world that, concretely, represents a great employment opportunities for graduates and recruiting for companies. We then have the task of raise awareness of the Its as much as possible, to young people, to families, to teachers'.

The Its courses offer a post-diploma pathway, an alternative to university, which provides training for two years in a company, with a national average employment rate of 80% one year after graduation and in 92% of cases in a technological area consistent with the pathway completed. This fact was emphasised by Vice President Stirpe himself, who in his role as entrepreneur employed nine young people in the company who received their diploma from Lazio's Its Mechatronic Institute on 1 July. "We wanted to give a positive signal and we wanted to do it in a symbolic dateon 1 July last year, the day after the expiry of the redundancy freeze in Italy. It was our way of showing that in life, commitments are respected with facts and that sterile polemics are completely useless. If there is work, companies hireas was the case for all the graduates of the Lazio Its Mechatronic. Rather, there is a strong issue of training and competence, to which we must give an answer'. For this, 'we need a good school guidance system for families and young people. Knowing the educational opportunities and the job opportunities they offer. Then there is the quality of educational pathways,' Stirpe added. Schools must never stop improving and young people must feel committed to an ever higher level of education and vocational training'. 'When schools and companies work together, the results are there for all to see,' Vice President Brugnoli echoed him. Training in line with the needs of companies and territories creates quality employment and reduces the Neet rate'.

Training is essential, to enter the job and to adapt one's skills to changes. But there is a problem of matching supply and demandrepresented by a strong mismatch between the skills required by companies and those churned out by schools: "we live the paradox of having 30% of young people between 20 and 34 years old in Italy who are neither studying nor working, the so-called Neet - stressed Stirpe. È the highest percentage in Europe. And at the same time, companies cannot find the profiles they need. We need more dialogue between schools and the world of work at all levels. Companies need technicians but also graduates. Compared to the rest of Europe, we have few science graduates. We are facing epochal transitions and these figures are needed to design the future. An effort must also be made on the gender opportunities front. Women's labour participation must grow, and for this we need to better orient their training paths as well as, of course, work on the contextual conditions, including cultural conditions, that can foster these processes. We are losing opportunities, perhaps even we are losing a generation and it is a big problem for a country like ours that is at the bottom of the European birth rate rankings'.

Hence the industry's expectations in view of the arrival of 1.5 billion in funding over the next five years with the NRP, which Prime Minister Mario Draghi himself, visiting the Its Cuccovillo in Bari in recent weeks, said should be used for new laboratories and 4.0 technologies: 'ours remains a country that has built its fortune on work and, in particular, on manufacturing. This backbone of ours must be kept healthy. We must focus on issues that can make the country's restart more effective. We need to work on knowledge and skills, therefore, on schooling and vocational training, we need to facilitate the entry of young people and women into the world of work, because we have a significant generation and gender gap. We need to be less ideological and improve the functioning of the labour market, focusing on greater flexibility in the labour market, with particular reference to fixed-term contracts. Of course we must work on the stabilisation of relationships, and for this we need far-reaching economic policies that allow the game of social shock absorbers and active labour policies, which are fundamental to foster people's employability, to be tackled in an orderly and consistent manner'.

Finally, a bet for the future, to network the ITCs: 'we are "studying the best ITC mechatronics in Italy and taking inspiration, I do not exclude for the future that Lazio's ITC mechatronics participate in the the birth of a genuine network of mechatronic Its that the reform under discussion in Parliament already provides for in order to improve the overall level of the Its in Italy,' Stirpe concluded.