Tera and the Decroly-Proeduca Group have reached an agreement to promote the participation of cluster companies in Dual Vocational Training programs. This collaboration will materialize from the 23-24 academic year through the students who are studying at the Decroly subsidized center; entity whose headquarters are in Santander and which is part of this international group with students in more than 90 countries.
Roberto García and Juan Carlos Ramos, vice president and manager of Tera, acted as hosts at the meeting that served to agree on the details of this new alliance. “Having FP Dual students in companies linked to Tera will allow us to reduce the gap that exists between the demands of the professional market and the supply of human capital,” said García. “It gives you time to get to know the student, really assess her abilities and try to retain her if she meets the expected standards,” the vice president concluded.
Ascensión Blázquez, academic director of UNIR FP, Héctor Alonso, business director of UNIR FP, Pedro Cuesta, director of Decroly and Claudia Sáez, professor and coordinator of FCT (Training in Work Centers) of Decroly, told the representatives of Tera that there is already considerable interest in this itinerary. “Currently, 25% of the students of the higher level training cycles related to Tera have already expressed their willingness to participate in this project next year” Sáez clarified.
Thanks to the link with Tera, the center, which already has successful experiences in Dual Vocational Training with students of “Administration of Networked Computer Systems”, will extend this possibility to both those enrolled in the higher-level cycle “Development of web applications” as well as middle grade students of “Microcomputer Systems and Networks”. All of them will be able to choose this option from October 2023.
“We are convinced of the need for collaboration between educational institutions and companies,” said Ascensión Blázquez. “What quality training does is bring students closer to the real world and provide employability, so it is a benefit for everyone,” Héctor Alonso added.
Dual Vocational Professional is an educational modality that is carried out alternating between the educational center and the company. Both in second and third years, students combine hours of teaching in class with other hours of learning in a real work environment. An enriching conjunction that provides the student with both the values of the corporate culture and the specific knowledge to perform that job. “This project is especially useful to try to alleviate the problem of attracting and retaining qualified professionals that the ICT sector suffers” explained Ramos. In this sense, the Tera Cluster and Proeduca will explore possible future collaborations around the specialized courses available to the entity.

Recruiting and retaining talent is a priority for Tera
The alliance with the Decroly Proeduca Group is part of the actions related to training that Tera is carrying out to try to alleviate the difficulty in attracting and retaining qualified professionals that affects the ICT sector.
In this sense, the Cluster carried out a study to find out the digital skills of technology companies in the region. This report, in which the possibilities posed by the training itineraries and the real demands of the companies were crossed, concluded that the most demanded technical profiles were related to embedded software, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.
Likewise, it highlighted the need for specific training on these matters. A circumstance in which various agreements were signed both with the University of Cantabria and with the European University of the Atlantic to try to resolve this imbalance.
Likewise, as a way to provide a basic layer of ICT training to all those interested, the Cluster reached an agreement with Fundación Telefónica to offer a series of free courses through its online learning platform. This initiative, which offers training on aspects such as programming, web design or the basic principles of Big Data, has been very well received. 540 people started one of the courses and a success rate of over 47% was achieved. It should also be noted that 70% of those enrolled were women.