New welfare and social inequalities. The italian case of vocational education and training

In recent decades, national and supranational institutions have redefined welfare models to respond to financial crises, digital and ecological transitions, population aging, and unemployment and pandemics. The Council of the European Union has highlighted the crucial role of education and training in addressing current socio-economic, demographic, environmental and technological challenges. In relation to these, the reactive capacity of Italian education systems should constitute a bulwark in the face of new forms of risk and requires decisive interventions in this direction. The article analyzes the most recent ways of implementing education and training policies in our country that put the development of the individual and society at the forefront, highlighting how the measures undertaken in terms of welfare, in reality, can produce distorted effects that consist in generating or maintaining social inequalities rather than limiting them. Through the processing of secondary data, we therefore examine their actual effectiveness in responding to a widespread demand for equity across the country, mainly in relation to the institutional capacity to strengthen the educational offer in the field of education and vocational training, to create human resources capital, and to guarantee everyone an equal opportunity to implement their personal agency.