The role of state, regions and local authorities in creating skills in the South

We have known for some time that it is human capital that is the decisive factor in the growth capacity of advanced economies. Its relevance is clear if we look at the transformations taking place in industry, where the companies capable of projecting themselves in international competition are those that leverage on scientific and technological innovation processes, on the sharing of skills, on the continuous and widespread technical evolution of concrete production processes. And the same is true in the world of industrial-type services (the public utilities) and in the professional services that are direct suppliers to industry. But agriculture itself is undergoing a profound transformation process today, both in the methods of working the land and in agro-industrial production. Not to mention personal services, where the qualification of employees is the decisive element for the 'productive' outcome, i.e. for those who use those services.

It is therefore essential, for the future of our country and its young generations, to recover the quality and training effectiveness of the education system. And if this is true for Italy as a whole, it is even more so for its Mezzogiorno. There is no shortage of strengths to build on in the South: from the many schools, particularly in the primary cycle, in which teachers lavish commitment and expertise in the training of children and young people, to the results achieved by the Higher Technological Institutes (Its) operating in the southern regions, to a number of universities of excellence and the academies connected to them. But it is good to be aware that we are also facing a significant gap in the field of education.

We can see it in the persistence in the South of a higher incidence of school drop-outs (boys and girls leaving school before having completed compulsory education), in the worsening of Invalsi test results in the transition to higher education, in the low diffusion of vocational and technical education, in the limited quantitative presence of Its a situation that is not without consequences on the higher percentage of Neet (young people who do not study and do not work) in the South. And we can see this in the student migration towards universities in the Centre-North, in the face of an albeit important and qualified, but quantitatively insufficient, presence of southern universities of excellence.

These are the issues at the heart of this year's edition of Agenda Sud 2030, the conference that the Merita Foundation is organising - in partnership with Cdp, Intesa Sanpaolo and some of Italy's leading companies - tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, 4 and 5 April in Naples, at Gallerie d'Italia. At the heart of the two-day event - entitled 'Competences for Development' - there will be operational proposals that focus on the urgent need to assume responsibility and a correct relationship between the guiding powers of the state and the role of the regions and local authorities.

Thus, in the area of primary and secondary education, the state must return to play a strong role in strengthening southern school institutes, and not only in terms of investment but above all in terms of teacher training and the homogenisation of student assessment criteria. In the area of vocational training, then, a targeted intervention is urgently needed - on the basis of Article 119 of the Constitution - to activate training courses in the regions that are most lacking them and in qualifying them so that they attract boys and girls to study and work paths, issues on which the business world must also assume a proactive responsibility. On the other hand, in order to make up for the shortage of higher technological institutes with respect to the needs of businesses, it is necessary to overcome the current fragmentation of competences between the state and the regions, providing real powers of direction and coordination in the hands of the state, to be supported with financial resources pursuant to Article 119 of the Constitution. Finally, in the university field it is necessary to strengthen the equalisation criteria of the ordinary financing fund and, at the same time, to strengthen the award criteria according to the educational performance objectives: it is a matter of directing an increasing (not decreasing) amount of resources towards raising the quality of the entire southern university fabric.