This is not news that specifically concerns our sector, but it caught our attention anyway, because it particularly involves STEM study paths, i.e. those most akin to the technical world (also) of Systems Integration.
The Invalsi tests of 2022 highlighted the delays in the Italian secondary school, but the educational measures launched under the PNRR (Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza) appear to be insufficient: in the fifth grade barely 52% of students have reached at least the level considered adequate in Italian, the same picture, if not worse, for mathematics: here 50% of students have reached basic results while the B2 level in English (reading) is reached by 52% of students. In addition, there are strong doubts about how the 20 billion of the PNRR for training will be spent: without touching the mechanisms that govern the functioning of the school (training for aspiring teachers, refresher courses for those who are already teachers, and career prospects for all), an investment of this magnitude would be useless.
It is therefore no surprise that in the Report on security and social insecurity in Italy and Europe, drawn up on the initiative of the Unipolis Foundation and Demos&Pi, young people’s concern for their future emerges, reflected in the answers given on the allocation of public spending, which they believe should focus on work, education and the environment, while there is concern among those just over 18 about intergenerational competition, who state in 71% of cases that they feel constrained and restrained by the older generations. Hence the increasingly common flight abroad.
A paradoxical picture thus emerges. the new generations are fewer and fewer in number, and not enough is being done to offer this dwindling class of young people an acceptable future: they are not adequately trained, they are not oriented on the needs of the world of work, they live in a condition of precariousness and uncertainty, of ‘competition’ (although perhaps not true) that induces them to look abroad, thus exacerbating the demographic crisis. But they are probably right on one point: the future they glimpse rests on conditions that are probably inadequate to build a career and to enrich the Italian professional landscape with talents.
