III GUIDANCE DAY FOR INCLUSIVE EDUCATION: By ensuring access to Higher Education and employability for all people.

On April 11, the Third Orientation Day for Inclusive Education took place in the Assembly Hall of the UNED Faculty of Education with the title: By ensuring access to Higher Education and employability for all people.

This meeting is part of the initiative of the ONCE Foundation and UNED, which, since 2020, have organized sessions dedicated to educational guidance and inclusive education every two years. The objective of this meeting has been to highlight the importance of guidance professionals to facilitate continuity in the training of students and help overcome the barriers encountered by people with disabilities or specific difficulties in moments of transition between educational or training stages, and the transition to employment. In the same way, experiences and processes have been presented so that attendees can learn about the work of technicians and professionals to identify key strategies to improve the access of students with disabilities to higher education and their incorporation into the labor market.

According to these objectives, the program has brought together representatives of the Ministry of Education, Vocational Training and Sports; to heads of entities and centers that work in guidance and inclusive education of students in different Autonomous Communities; to technicians and experts both from the university area and from CEDEFOP who have presented studies about the presence and results of this type of students in higher education; and people with disabilities who have shared their life experience and the training and professional itinerary they have followed in order to receive inclusive educational care that is respectful of their personal characteristics.

At the opening ceremony of the Conference, the General Director of planning, innovation and management of Vocational Training, Pilar Varela Díaz, spoke in reference to the advances represented by the new regulatory framework of the Vocational Training System, since the publication of Organic Law 3/2022, of March 31, about the organization and integration of Vocational Training, to ensure the inclusion and attention to the diversity of all people who need or wish to qualify through these teachings to obtain a job and full social and labor integration.

Likewise, Asunción Manzanares Moya, Deputy Director General of Guidance and Lifelong Learning, explained in her speech the principles and offers that make up the new Vocational Training system, as well as the measures to make these offers more flexible and adapt them to the different training and support needs that anyone can raise to Vocational Training and responds to the demands of all citizens, regardless of their starting situation and interests.

In her presentation, she highlighted the modalities and new training offers contemplated by Royal Decree 659/2023, of July 18, by which the organization of the Vocational Training System is developed. This standard provides, among other measures, for greater cooperation and collaboration between all the agents involved to offer quality, progressive, accreditable training that allows continuity in training for the improvement and adaptation of the professional qualifications of all people.

The Deputy Director General, on the other hand, emphasized the important role that guidance professionals must play to provide users with the necessary information about all the training and accreditation options available to them, as well as to accompany each person in defining their itinerary and making decisions in moments of transition.

She also highlighted the commitment of the competent Administrations to advance in the realization of the lines of work that the new legal framework incorporates to promote vocational training more connected to companies and work centers, which must be main collaborators in qualification of students and workers, so that dual vocational training is widely and completely implemented.

At the closing of the Conference, by Pilar Gomiz Pascual, Director of UNIDIS (Center for Attention to University Students with Disabilities), the participants thanked everyone for their commitment to making full inclusion a reality and requested a greater effort to offer opportunities to all people, with or without disabilities, and highlighted the importance of the achievements through the joint and motivating work of teachers, counselors, management teams, families and the students.

In conclusion, the need to continue working from a network perspective to overcome barriers and possible obstacles, as well as ensure the training of teachers and technicians so that they can provide the appropriate response to people's needs.

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