SCHOOL/ Rav and professional training, so the "last" become first
The volume "Self-assessment in vocational education and training" contains the results of the RAV experiment in 173 CFP
In 2020-21 and 2021-22, a pilot program of the Self-Evaluation Report (RAV) was conducted in vocational training. This program, which had already been implemented for some time in all Italian schools of all levels, reached its fourth edition in 2025.
The RAV is a potentially rather challenging document in which schools describe the context, users, educational offerings, internal organizational processes and their results based on those of INVALSI and finally define an Improvement Plan.
It should serve to provide a broad spectrum of information to interested parties, primarily families, because it is easily available on the ministry's Scuola in Chiaro website.
Interest in the book that presents it, Self-assessment in Professional Education and Training , edited by Michela Freddano (Franco Angeli, 2025), goes beyond the narrow circle of specialists because the ongoing introduction of the so-called 4+2 , that is, an integrated training path at secondary and tertiary level, places job training fully within the National Education System and therefore makes it desirable that all the tools deemed valid for its functioning be used there, starting precisely with the RAV.
It can be added that the fact that the activities were carried out during the Covid period and therefore necessarily remotely gives them methodological importance, as it could constitute a reference point for a possible resumption of visits by the External Evaluation Units foreseen in the SNV, useful if not essential for accrediting the entire process.
Thanks to the emergency situation, a technological infrastructure for registering and compiling the RAV and questionnaires has also been established on the SNV's own platform, which can also be used in the future.
Distracted by squabbles over national guidelines and high school graduation exams, we could forget something serious: the need to develop a dignified and attractive level of job training that prevents us from falling into underdevelopment and becoming a country of chefs, hoteliers, and influencers.
It is disconcerting, if not ridiculous, that those who advocate in every way for the right to self-realization, sometimes transforming freedom into license, recognize the right to existence and dignity only to generalist education , a presumed source of true culture and critical spirit – of which, moreover, there seems to be little trace around – and do not recognize the legitimacy and value of other vocations of a more operational nature and indeed see in them signs of cultural, if not moral, subordination.
In the preface, Arduino Salatin – deus ex machina of the field – recalls that this experiment was preceded by the introduction of the INVALSI tests also in Vocational Training Centres (CFP).
Furthermore, the results of these tests are an integral and important part of the RAV. Since 2014, a group composed of INVALSI, ISFOL, and Tecnostruttura, the regional coordination body for this issue, along with the Salesian Centers, have been responsible for preparing and administering these tests as part of the annual INVALSI curriculum.
The accredited Salesian training centers are certainly not the only valid ones, but they constitute a pedagogically solid organization with strong national roots. It is no coincidence that they have chosen this path (INVALSI and RAV tests) to place themselves within the national education system with full dignity.
It's important to note, first of all, that the 173 training centers participating in the trial do not constitute a significant statistical sample, but were the result of voluntary participation. Therefore, the data obtained cannot be generalized.
The reason? There is no national registry of regional vocational training. Is this the responsibility of the regions, which have interpreted the constitutional mandate in a perniciously proprietary sense? Or of the ministerial center, which has always tended to view this sector with suspicion and not consider it true education? The fact remains that the situation is disconcerting.
Nonetheless, this initial data collection could provide a very interesting basis for in-depth research on the world of Italian vocational training . Overall, it can be said that the locations—which participated voluntarily—maintained a significant commitment during a highly critical period like Covid, to an almost complete extent, as 97% completed the final questionnaire.
There is also a tendency towards positive self-evaluation with a widespread use of the highest levels (5, 6 and 7) even greater than that generally recorded in the rest of the national school system.
Other available elements to investigate: the level of learning recorded in the INVALSI tests compared with that of courses in the education system of a similar socio-economic level, the results of internal assessment tests in relation to continuation of studies, subsequent school orientation, entry into the world of work, teaching practices and management and organizational practices in many of its areas.
A little-known world, that of vocational training, one might say. Partly because it has been marginalized by a "high" culture that has never taken into account the culture of practicality, as is the case in traditionally Protestant countries. One exception is a segment of the Catholic world, represented in this case by the Salesians, who, especially in the North, have developed a culture of work that is also present at the union level.
A culture that comes from religious concern for the least, but which aims to emancipate them, unlike opposing cultures which, once the Marxist emancipationist and productivist tradition has run its course, seem to aim to make them the human model of reference.
But it is also vocational training which, aware of the unfavorable context, tends in many of its parts to isolate itself, to consider itself a world apart dedicated to the care of marginalized people, without the will or the ability to measure up to the cultures mentioned above.
Demanding the right to recognize a person's operational vocations, with equal if not sometimes superior dignity, is perhaps the key to opening the door.
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