Less school, more precariousness

Ricardo Braginski

08/02/2021 21:40

• Clarín.com

• Opinion

Updated 08/02/2021 21:40

Until now it was pure theory, speculations.

There was talk of scary figures, such as that in Argentina today the percentage of

youth unemployment

is the highest in the region: 28.5% among women and 12.8% among men, according to the latest INDEC figures.

There was talk of the

effect produced by the education crisis

on this. Of the high dropout rate in secondary school (about 50% of students do not finish it in a timely manner). And with the pandemic, the impact of

having closed the classrooms for more than a year

and having left hundreds of thousands of adolescents without the possibility of advancing or finishing their studies. Also of the "mismatch" between the content provided by the school and the skills demanded by the labor market.

All this was theory, but it was enough for the head of the Toyota automaker to speak in Argentina for

the tragedy to be understood and observed with much more precision

.

Daniel Herrero said, in an online meeting, that the company is planning to expand its Zárate plant and bring current production from 140,000 units to 160,000.

He added that they are waiting for the OK from their parent company in Japan, but that they have

a significant drawback

: they would need to

incorporate another 200 employees

and it is difficult for them to gather that number of candidates with the minimum entry requirements that an industry such as automotive demands today.

Basically,

young people with a complete high school

.

The journalist Luis Ceriotto told it in

Clarín

.

Daniel Herrero, head of Toyota Argentina and ADEFA, vice 1 of IDEA.

“In Buenos Aires the value of (having) a secondary school was lost.

And (young people) find it difficult even to read a newspaper.

We have to work, with our social responsibility, in the education of Argentina towards the future ”, he declared.

Toyota's demand joins that of many other companies that offer quality jobs and can

not find the right profiles in the country

.

At the same time, young people who are unemployed and increasingly abandoned by the educational system are multiplying,

ending up in jobs and situations of extreme precariousness.

There is something that does not work and it is more than evident. Perhaps the time has come to seriously think about a high school that, in addition to being attractive to teenagers, also

resolutely trains for work

. There are successful examples in the world.

Has anyone heard a candidate for the next election talk about this?