The President of the Government of the Azores stressed on Monday the importance of vocational training skills for enhancing employability amongst youngsters about to enter into the labour market as well as those who are unemployed.

Carlos César mentioned the priority status awarded to vocational training across the developed world – in Germany, for example, there are many students enrolled at vocational training schools as those attending regular schools  - and stated that the number of students attending vocational training schools has risen in the Region.

However, he urged the need to undertake increased efforts to win the challenge of quality “by preparing a generation that, in addition to their employability potential, will take active part in the context of the new paradigms of growth and competitiveness.”
 
For Carlos César, who presided over the ceremony to lay the first stone of the new premises of the vocational training school of the Office and Commerce Employees’ Union (EPROSEC), “vocational training schools should focus on the articulation between education and employability, but they should be also managed more efficiently.

Therefore, these schools will be able to contribute to a humanistic, artistic and technological culture, facilitate the students’ integration into working life by providing them with information, contacts and experiences in the labour world. In this context, vocational training schools also become centres of entrepreneurship, which is much needed in the Azores.
 
The President reminded the great effort undertaken by the Government in the area of vocational training, revealing that every year over six thousand youngsters are enrolled at vocational training schools, over one thousand are comprised by strategies addressed at the integration into working life, about one hundred are undertaking internships abroad and over a thousand are participating in professional reconversion or professional certification programmes.

“These figures clearly demonstrate the dimension of the effort undertaken. Naturally, this effort will certainly have a positive impact in the future,” stated Carlos César.

And if it is necessary to adapt vocational training and higher education courses to the needs of labour market, Carlos César is sure that the skills of Azorean youngsters already have a positive impact.

“With regard to our unemployed, about six thousand are unqualified, one hundred and fifty hold a university degree and less than one hundred hold a vocational training diploma,” stressed Carlos César, adding that these figures evidence the importance of vocational training for employability.

As he had mentioned in his speech, the future premises of EPROSEC – an 8.5 million Euro project to be implemented in Piedade, Arrifes, with the support of the Regional Government – will have a capacity for 528 students and provide better conditions so that this school may continue to carry out the action that has been developing for the past twenty years, which was considered by Carlos César as “a strong contribution to the training of Azorean youth.”