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AUG. SEP. 2021 VII resume in full, especially the workshops and apprenticeships, and fortunately everything seems to be pointing in that direction”. SCHOOL MEETS WORK IN FERRARA “I have been the school headmaster of this school since September 2019,” says Massimiliano Urbinati, who heads the Polo Agroalimentare Estense, the Vergani- Navarra Institute, which in Ferrara includes a hotel and an agricultural institute, “and I had to manage the continuity of lessons during the pandemic after a few months. In the space of a week, we set up a platform for videoconferencing lessons, and we didn’t just bring the lesson we would have given in the classroom online: we changed the teaching methodology to adopt active techniques and create greater involvement among the students. In the meantime, we opened up to social media and went on Instagram. These were projects that I already had in mind and that the pandemic has accelerated. I am very proud of what we have done. For Urbinati, the school, which is useful for training people who are truly capable of integrating into society, must not remain isolated, but must play an active and proactive role. “I believe that the concept of school, as we understand it, is outdated because it relegates it to a single phase of life. I think we really need to arrive at lifelong learning, in which the school represents an interlocutor with institutions, associations and the world of work in its own area and field of interest. Hotel management schools, for example, should be involved in all food-related initiatives in their cities. Our institute, for example, is collaborating in the organisation of the Ferrara Food Festival, and I am working to make it the headquarters of the category associations related to catering and hospitality operating in our area. This will allow us to have a real comparison with the world of work. Among other things, I believe that our catering sector has all the skills needed to allow young people entering the profession to familiarise themselves with this work; unfortunately, it is lacking in terms of organisation and the difficulties of this period have made the situation even more complicated. Setting up consortia that also actively involve hotelier institutes could help to fill the organisational gaps”. Urbinati believes that this approach is essential to overcome the mistrust that many parents have towards vocational schools, preferring high schools. “Having started at this school in the 2019-2020 school year,” he emphasises, “I can say I am satisfied that the number of enrolments has been maintained. I believe that in order to overcome the paradigm that for a boy or girl who does well in school, high school is the optimal choice, schools like ours must show themselves to be so connected to the local area and the world of work that they understand that the student will leave prepared to face life, whether it leads him or her to start working or towards university education.” TRAINING IS DESIGN “Being a chef is going to be increasingly difficult and training is the only possible way to carry out the profession in the best possible way”. Roberto Carcangiu, president of APCI (Associazione Professionale Cuochi Italiani - Professional Association of Italian Chefs), who has always been a passionate supporter of the need for training for catering professionals, and it is no coincidence that he is the didactic director of Congusto Gourmet Institute, a school of advanced training and professional specialisation dedicated to cuisine and gastronomic disciplines, states. The subjects on which a chef needs to be trained,” he continues, “are always increasing. Those who work for large companies will have more in-depth training, but in a narrow field; those who work for a small business will need to train more extensively, but perhaps less in-depth, in order to have the necessary information to understand if they are in a risky situation and to consider hiring a consultant to manage that situation. Unfortunately, my colleagues show little inclination to continue training and tend more to react to a problem than to design ways of avoiding it: training is a design activity. I have the impression that most chefs are not willing to invest time and resources in quality, super partes training.