Traditions of vocational education are being actively revived in St. Petersburg

St. Petersburg is doing a lot of work to revive the traditions of vocational education. Governor Alexander Beglov stated this at a joint plenary meeting as part of the finals of the professional skills championship “Professionals” and the IX All-Russian Forum “National Qualification System of Russia,” emphasizing that such an approach “is required by the current economic situation.”

As RosBalt was informed by the press service of Smolny, thousands of new jobs are created every month in St. Petersburg, resulting in a high demand for personnel. Almost 70% of this need is for skilled workers and mid-level specialists.

Over the past year, the number of people employed in industry alone in St. Petersburg increased by almost 30 thousand people – this is the largest increase in the last 10 years. The greatest demand arose for blue-collar professions: machine operators, welders, and electricians.

To fill all vacancies, it is necessary to increase the number of young workers, engage in retraining and advanced training, and attract migrants from other regions. The city works in all three areas, but prioritizes youth training as a long-term strategic resource. Already today, colleges, together with enterprises, are forming educational and production clusters in shipbuilding, mechanical engineering, and light industry. Next in line are the pharmaceutical and electronics industries.

“In order to train personnel in a focused manner, in response to the real requests of enterprises, it was necessary to learn how to correctly calculate this request. We created a digital platform on which we began to collect information from two sides: from the employer and from the education system. Today, about 300 enterprises and more than 40 colleges are already registered on the platform. Enterprises enter data on their personnel needs onto the platform, and colleges enter information about who they are training. When we collected the first slice and compared the request volumes and the preparation volumes, we discovered a significant gap. For some professions and specialties – at times. But thanks to this data, they began to correct the personnel imbalance,” said Alexander Beglov.

In 2023, the structure of admission to colleges in St. Petersburg changed: the number of budget places for the most in-demand professions was significantly increased, while for others it was reduced. For example, business required 2-3 times more machine operators and welders than colleges could train. In order to multiply the number of specialists, in addition to funds, additional capacities are needed: space, equipment, industrial training specialists.

The governor said that the equipment that was purchased for the championship will be placed at special training grounds where students will be able to undergo additional professional training. “St. Petersburg is the largest industrial center in Russia. Therefore, we have a special responsibility in ensuring the technological sovereignty of Russia, which the president spoke about,” emphasized Alexander Beglov.

Participating in the plenary session were Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Tatyana Golikova, President of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs Alexander Shokhin, General Director of the Roscosmos State Corporation Yuri Borisov, Honorary Citizen of St. Petersburg, Executive Director of Roscosmos for manned programs Sergei Krikalev.

Russian President Vladimir Putin sent greetings to the participants of the meeting. It states, in particular, that over the past years, the expert platform of the forum has built an effective dialogue between the state, business, educational and trade union organizations on issues of strengthening the country’s human resources potential. “I hope that this ninth meeting will allow us to formulate initiatives that will be applied in practice and will serve to increase labor productivity in the domestic economy and social sphere,” the head of state noted.