Somorrostro has seen its work recognised at an event held at the Palacio Euskalduna with limited access but transmitted by streaming. The school received the ‘Golden A‘ award, the highest recognition that an organisation can receive in the Basque Country for the quality of its management practices.

The award has been granted by the Basque Government through EUSKALIT after a specific external evaluation focused on five key elements of the management: Strategy, Customers, People, Society and Innovation.

Advanced management pursues the maximum effectiveness and efficiency of organisations through a model that evaluates strengths and areas for improvement on the path to management excellence. The EUSKALIT awards are achieved by organisations in the Basque Country that demonstrate, in an external evaluation carried out by members of the EUSKALIT Evaluation Club, a certain level of progress in their management practices, using the Advanced Management Model as a reference.

The President of the Basque Government, by video, has closed the ceremony in which six members of his government (Arantxa Tapia, Councillor for Economic Development, Sustainability and the Environment; Beatriz Artolazabal, Councillor for Equality, Justice and Social Policies; Jokin Bildarratz, Councillor for Education; Gotzone Sagardui, Councillor for Health; Pedro Azpiazu, Councillor for the Economy and the Treasury; and Iñaki Arriola, Councillor for Territorial Planning, Housing and Transport), together with the President of EUSKALIT, José Luis Díaz, were responsible for presenting the awards to all the prize-winning entities.

For Javier Laiseca, director of Somorrostro, obtaining the Golden A, “is essentially a recognition of the coherence of the daily work of the Somorrostro Training Centre, establishing the relationship between its Strategy in line with its Vision statement, its daily practices in relation to its target groups, students, families, staff of the Centre, our Own Entity, the Administration and Society itself in general and with the message we transmit to the outside world”.

The organisation’s efforts in the field of advanced management will serve, in the words of Javier Laiseca, “both internally: reinforcing the culture of Somorrostro, through a participatory process that defines and integrates a coherent approach between its purposes, Mission, Vision and Values, and its daily behaviour; and externally, towards the rest of society, consolidating its legitimacy in the eyes of citizens, public administrations, social agents, funders and institutions…”