Madrid is, by far, the Spanish Community in which parents are more satisfied with the education their children receive. It is also one in which Vocational Training has a worse image. This is demonstrated by a study carried out by Educa2020 with Sigma Dos and the Axa Foundation, with a total of 19,000 samples, of which just over half a thousand correspond to the Community of Madrid.
This demoscopic work, the largest ever conducted by private initiative around educational issues, indicates that, in Madrid, just over 87 percent of parents, mothers and guardians of students between four and eighteen years of age say they feel satisfied with the education your children receive. This is a substantial difference from the national average, in which only 61 percent of parents say they are happy with how their children are being educated.
The FP, 'the ugly duckling'
The study affects the questions on the valuation of Vocational Training, the most demanded by companies when hiring. Madrid again takes the palm on a national scale, because a 77'2 percent of parents, mothers and guardians surveyed recognize a bad image of the FP, while nationally this percentage drops to 57'5 percent . A sample, in either case, that Vocational Training continues to be 'the ugly duckling' in the world of education, although pursuing careers related to technology since FP is now a guarantee of finding an immediate well-paid job.
Educa2020 responsible for the explanation of this latest survey to parents, mothers and guardians of students the results of three previous, made since 2016 to nine thousand university students, 12,800 high school students and 2,500 companies, a total of 43,000 responses, to draw a complete overview of the state of 'education for employability' in Spain. Specifically in Madrid, 58 percent of companies admit having difficulties when finding suitable candidates to fill their job offer; the national average is somewhat higher, at 63 percent.
Madrid is configured, according to the survey, as the Spanish Community in which couples have a greater number of children: holds a record in parents with three or four children. Those who responded most to the survey were mothers (65 percent and 34 percent parents), aged between 42 and 64 years and with higher education. The increasingly high age at which they have children, accompanied by the fact that in the whole of Spain, ninety percent of couples (74 percent in Madrid) only have one or two children throw a worrying picture of the future of the population pyramid, those responsible for Educa 2020 highlighted.
The presentation of this study was made at the headquarters of the Confederation of Business Organizations in Madrid, with the assistance of the president of the CEOE, Antonio Garamendi; the CEO of AXA Spain and president of the AXA Foundation, Olga Sánchez; the director of Research and Analysis of Sigma Dos, José Miguel de Elías, and those responsible for Educa2020. Garamendi said that "we live in a totally globalized context in which we are witnessing an authentic technological revolution. A new scenario in which works disappear and new ones appear unceasingly. We have to prepare ourselves, therefore, for this new labor market that is already visible and in which education and training will be the main axes on which our success as a society will pivot "".
On the other hand, Olga Sánchez, presented by the president of Educa2020, Fernando Jáuregui, as "the head of a Foundation that has been concerned, from the private initiative, to offer a complete picture of how education is in Spain," stressed that "we need a state pact on education of young people to ensure their employability and the economic future of the country. " "These studies are a good knowledge base to build a great deal," he added.
The four studies carried out by Educa2020, a forum for journalistic research on educational issues, in cooperation with the AXA Foundation and with organizations of parents of students, schools and institutes, as well as various departments of Education, seek to link education with employability .
For this reason, a first survey was conducted in 2016 to nine thousand university students, trying to find out their future professional concerns; the same thing was repeated in 2017 with 12,800 high school students and FP, with deep differences in the behavior of both before the professional panorama. The third survey, conducted in 2018 to 2,500 companies throughout Spain, representing more than four million workers, yielded the aforementioned results. "Something happens when more than sixty percent of companies say they can not find candidates for their job offer, and yet, in Spain, youth unemployment remains at levels above thirty percent: it is urgent to adapt supply and demand," explained Josep Alfonso, director of the AXA Foundation.
Finally, this fourth survey that is now presented, whose fieldwork was conducted between the past months of January and May, sought to find out the influence of parents when it comes to guiding where their children's careers should go. The work was carried out as a closure of an E2020 activity that lasted more than five years, as it was found that more than sixty percent of high school students -something less among FP students- said that the main influence on the time to decide what to study and what 'to be of greater' comes from the parents, and not from the academic counselors or tutors.
Educa 2020 plans to publish imminently a complete comparative study between the results of the four surveys, undoubtedly the most ambitious work ever undertaken in the field of 'education and employment' from the field of civil society.