The General Council for Vocational Training (Consejo General de Formación Profesional, CGFP) – an advisory body where education and labour authorities responsible for VET work together with trade unions and employers’ associations – has set up several working groups to boost the VET system. It has several objectives: improving productivity, competitiveness and business innovation; contributing to the employability of young people and adults; and reactivating the social lift towards attractive, well-paid intermediate qualifications.

These new working groups are shaped around the following topics:

  1. development, evaluation and quality of the entire VET system;
  2. professional information and guidance;
  3. national reference centres and integrated vocational training centres;
  4. dual VET;
  5. accreditation of professional competences acquired through work experience.

The Director General of the Spanish public employment service (SEPE) announced the creation of these working groups at the international seminar Training for employment, a key factor in the future of work, co-organised by Fundae, SEPE and OIT/Cinterfor in November 26-28th to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the training for employment sub-system (El Sistema de Formación Profesional para el Empleo). This seminar addressed the current state of training for employment in Latin America and Spain and gave rise to sharing knowledge and experiences on its role as driver for progress in the workplace.

Developing talent

The event + Future + Progress = + VET. The education that develops the talent, organised on November 13th by the Ministry of Education and VET, demonstrated the political support for VET: the Spanish President, together with the two ministers in charge of education and labour, made visible the Government's commitment to promote and consolidate an integrated VET model that accommodates and capitalises on all the training activities offered by public and accredited private agents, responding quickly to the needs of skilled workers in different economic sectors.

These actions, alongside incorporating the word VET into the ministry of education name, are part of the executive's strategy to promote a more prestigious VET, to play a decisive role in the modernisation of the national production model and valued across Europe.

Measures to tackle unemployment through VET revealed at the event were the revision of all VET qualifications related to emerging sectors, such as industry 4.0, the circular economy, or 5G communication networks, and their immediate transposition into VET offers in the education system. This last action includes development of specialised courses such as cyber-security, robotics, big data and virtual reality, following two others expected in 2018 (cell cultures and audio description and subtitling). These courses are training programmes for VET graduates who wish to expand and adapt their professional skills to the new sectoral demands and were foreseen in Royal Decree 1147/2011, though they had not yet been developed.

The government is also permanently updating the National catalogue of occupational standards (Catálogo Nacional de Cualificaciones Profesionales, CNCP). Following approval and official publication of the updated standards, new VET degrees based on them will be designed. To bring VET closer to citizens, existing materials will be updated for the delivery of distance learning, and new ones developed. Educational materials are already available for 110 VET qualifications (of a total of 168 diplomas) in the education system through e-learning platforms. This review process will be done in collaboration with the autonomous communities.

In the course of the coming months, the national PES is to publish new legal provisions to amend certain aspects of the latest Act 30/2015, which reformed the vocational training system of the labour system, and to develop it.

The Ministries of Education and of Labour are jointly developing initiatives to streamline the identification of new professional qualifications, through a new role in the Observatory of Qualifications, as well as to simplify the accreditation of skills acquired through work experience.

 

Read more:

El Gobierno impulsa el debate sobre una nueva Formación Profesional de prestigio y reconocida en Europa [+ Future + Progress = + VET. The education that develops the talent event]

Seminario internacional la formación para el empleo: factor clave en el futuro del trabajo

25 años del sistema de la formación para el empleo: La Formación para el Empleo en el Futuro del Trabajo

#25añosFPE