Abstract

The contribution provides elements for reflection aimed at identifying continuing training, understood as a species of vocational training, as a strategic factor for skills development. Among general considerations, it is of utmost relevance to focus on the difficulty experienced in identifying a training system and, more specifically, a vocational training system and a related continuing training system. Such difficulty is ascribed to some interrelated factors, such as: multilevel governance; the coexistence of a number of both public and private actors providing resources, which entails close interweaving of training-related funding sources; and the need for recognition, in the Italian legal system, of a subjective right to continuing training. The essay then analyses some of the most recent regulatory and policy acts likely to favour the development of a continuous training system that, through the participation of all the actors involved, is able to adequately address the elements of innovation emerged in recent years in the labour market, also following the Covid-19 emergency. The contribution ends by highlighting the role of continuing training from a prospective point of view, also in the light of the European Year of Skills.