Job placement at hotel and catering schools: from work placements to the first contract

A graduate of an Italian istituto alberghiero (hotel and catering school) or istituto professionale (vocational school) may get a first contract from a company that has already watched them work during a work placement. The school sits in the middle of that step, and the law lets it do so formally: a secondary school may act as a labour intermediary for its own students. This article covers the conditions, the records to keep and a calendar for the year.

What the law allows

Article 6(1)(a) of Legislative Decree 276/2003 authorises state and paritarie (state-recognised private) upper secondary schools to carry out intermediation "on condition that they make the CVs of their final-year students public and freely accessible on their institutional websites, until at least twelve months after the date the qualification is obtained".

Paragraph 3 adds two conditions: interconnection with the national continuous labour exchange through the Cliclavoro portal, and sending the Regions and the Ministry of Labour the information needed to monitor skill needs and the functioning of the labour market. In practice the school logs in with SPID (Italy's public digital identity) to the Portal for active labour policies, applies for sub-section 3.1 of the Ministry's online register (Albo informatico) and sends the prior-notice form signed by its legal representative. Schools do not have to attach a revenue stamp, and for the bodies listed in Article 6 the authorisation has no expiry date.

Article 2 defines what intermediation includes: collecting CVs, pre-selection and building a database, managing the match between labour supply and demand, and careers guidance. Students may not be charged anything (Art. 11).

Two related cases:

• ITS Academy (post-secondary higher technical institutes). They are authorised by Law 99/2022 (Art. 6(7)), on condition that they publish their students' CVs from enrolment until at least the twelfth month after the diploma.
• Regional vocational training centres (IeFP). Letter (a) covers state and paritarie schools. A training provider has to check whether it falls under another letter of Article 6, for example (e) (non-profit associations that design and deliver training and work-based learning), or whether it operates under a regional accreditation for employment services.

What to keep on file

Since the 2025/26 school year, PCTO, the mandatory school-to-work hours, has been renamed formazione scuola-lavoro (school-to-work training) (Law 145/2018, Art. 1(784-octies)). Obligations and content are unchanged: in vocational schools, at least 210 hours over the final three years (paragraph 784).

Legislative Decree 77/2005 gives those hours a weight worth using. The company tutor, whom the law calls the external training tutor, gives the school "every element needed to verify and assess the student's activities" (Art. 5). The school assesses and certifies the skills acquired and, at the end of the programme, issues a certification of the skills gained through work experience (Art. 6). The placements then appear in the Student Curriculum (Curriculum della studentessa e dello studente), attached to the diploma, with year, type, host organisation and hours; the school-leaving exam (esame di maturità) takes them into account (Legislative Decree 62/2017, Art. 12).

For every student and every placement, record:

• host company, department, dates and hours actually worked;
• tasks carried out, described concretely;
• the company tutor's written evaluation, collected when the placement ends, not at the end of the year;
• any certificates obtained during the period.

These are the same details you need when a company asks for a graduate: who has already worked in which department, and with what assessment.

The calendar for the year

• September and October. Agreements with companies, hours planned per class, tutors assigned. The agreement may not assign students to high-risk work (paragraph 784-novies); companies listed in the national school-to-work register attach to the agreement the section of their risk assessment that covers students (paragraph 784-quater).
• During the year. Hours and the tutor's evaluation recorded within a few days of each placement ending.
• Final year. If the school acts as an intermediary, final-year CVs must be published on its website. This is also the time to collect requests from companies that hosted placements.
• After the diploma. CVs stay online for at least twelve months. In Lombardy, schools, ITS foundations and accredited IeFP providers may also promote post-study internships (tirocini extracurriculari) (Regional Resolution DGR 7763/2018).

Where software helps

The hard part is keeping hours, evaluations and CVs for hundreds of students together without scattered spreadsheets. InTransparency is the software a school can use to do that: placements and internships are recorded one by one or imported from a CSV file, students get a weekly reminder to log their hours, the tutor leaves an evaluation and each placement has a journal. Students build a portfolio from their own work, and a skill counts as verified only when a teacher or the school confirms it.

On the job board every ad names the employer, and students apply themselves. Job placement stays with the school; the software keeps the records in order. It is free for students.