The United States is interested in Basque Vocational Training

• 15 US vocational training centres, led by the Education Attaché of the US Embassy in Spain, visit the Euskadi Vocational Training Applied Research and Innovation Centre - Tknika
• After visiting Tknika's facilities, the American delegation will also visit several public vocational training centres in the Basque Country.
• Vocational training centres in the Basque Country and the USA to promote student exchanges and cooperation in various projects.

The Basque Minister for Education, Jokin Bildarratz, together with the Basque Deputy Minister for Vocational Training, Jorge Arevalo, received a delegation of 15 centres or colleges of vocational training in the United States of America this morning at Tknika’s facilities (Centre for Research and Applied Innovation of Basque Vocational Training). It was led by the Education, Entrepreneurship and Environment Attaché of the U. S. Embassy in Madrid, Justen Thomas, and representatives of Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU), an association that represents more than 500 colleges and universities in the United States, the Spanish-speaking Americas and Spain.

The visit was part of the initiative promoted by the Embassy so that US vocational training centres can learn about the Basque model for vocational training and the innovative projects being developed in the region. It has the aim to promote relations and exchanges between students from the US and the Basque Country, as well as between vocational training centres in the two nations.

After a general presentation on the Basque vocational training system and its main indicators, the American delegation visited some of Tknika's facilities with the centre's directors. The leaders of 15 colleges from states including California, Arkansas, Nevada, Texas, Illinois and New York learned about projects being developed in areas such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and industrial automation, as well as the immersive and interactive technologies being used to prepare students in a wide range of career families.

In the life sciences and sustainability area, they visited the laboratories and the space where the Landarrain food innovation project is being developed. This is an aquaponic system that combines aquaculture and hydroponics to produce fish and vegetables in a recirculating system. The effluent from the fish production tanks serves as a source of nutrients for the plants, which in turn act as biological filters, cleaning the water that returns to the tanks. This keeps the system in balance and ensures the correct water quality.

Visit to Basque Vocational Training Centres

After getting to know Tknika's facilities and the research and applied innovation projects it is working on, the American delegation will visit some Basque vocational training centres. In the afternoon, they will travel to the Easo Politeknikoa Integrated Vocational Training Centre in San Sebastian, where they will be able to see the real implementation in the classrooms and workshops of all the projects, they learned about in the morning at Tknika.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, they will travel to another Basque vocational training public centre, the School of Hospitality in Leioa. They will be able to see the progress being made in the culinary sector: digital transformation in restaurants (Restaurante 4.0 project), virtual environments applied to gastronomy or food innovation and sustainability projects, among others.