The Regional Secretary for Education and Culture stated today that the "coexistence" between regular education and the vocational training subsystem in the Azores "is still insufficient."
 
Avelino Meneses spoke at the Meeting on Education and Autonomy, an event promoted by the Azorean Government and the National Education Council to discuss the most outstanding issues of education in the Region in the last 40 years. The government official pointed out as causes for this situation the "weakness" of the business fabric in the absorption of trainees and the "irregularity" in the funding of courses and schools.
 
Beside these reasons, Avelino Meneses added "the temptation to convert vocational training into the refuge of the less capable," transforming this level of education "into a last resort, a sort of recovery from early abandonment and remediation of school failure."
 
In his speech, the government official defended that the "priority" of training professionals in schools, even before the creation of specific courses, "requires the implementation of a more practical teaching for all."
 
Avelino Meneses also stressed that the creation of vocational training courses "is for everyone and not only for those who have fallen into the trap of failure," adding that only then vocational training courses "will become powerful weapons to combat abandonment, disqualification, unemployment and exclusion."
 
For the Regional Secretary, vocational training has "the same dignity as regular education" and must, therefore, "raise the choice of the majority of the school population" at least "from a certain age," as this option "will not be inhibited from any advantage, including access to university."
 
Otherwise, added Avelino Meneses, if, for any reason, the professional path becomes associated "with low quality offer, the project will necessarily be compromised," seeing that it will not raise the confidence of students, parents and tutors, and companies.
 
The Regional Secretary for Education and Culture also highlighted the "encouraging" data already achieved with the implementation of ProSucesso - Azores for Education, a programme for the promotion of school success. This project is designed for 10 years as "educational time differs from political time."
 
In addition to Avelino Meneses and the president of the National Education Council (CNE), David Justino, the meeting was attended by Reis Leite, Regional Secretary for Education in the first governments of the Azores, Ana Bettencourt, education specialist and former president of CNE, Fabíola Cardoso, former Regional Director for Education, and Victor Rui Dores, former CNE adviser.