The standard allows tailored training, encourages internships and establishes gateways with the university
On the campaign trail, the Popular Party prevented the new Vocational Training law, which Congress approved yesterday, from becoming the educational standard with the greatest consensus since the Transition, a fact that the Socialists, led by the Minister of Education, Pilar Alegría herself , they had started selling as something historic.
Until the president called to vote, after one-thirty in the afternoon, the popular were considering abstaining from a law that has had the backing of broad union and business sectors. However, when it was time to press the button, the conservative bench pressed the ‘no’, to the surprise of its partners from Unión del Pueblo Navarro (UPN) and Vox, who remained in abstention. With this turn, the PP, which had abstained two weeks ago in the Education Commission against the same text, activated the only ‘no’s’ and ended the socialist party.
The law, which could receive a definitive yes and come into force in March, contemplates a four-year transition period in which the bulk of the system’s reforms will be gradually implemented.
The reform gives a strong boost to virtual teaching and designs a flexible and cumulative training system
The regulation aims to promote and modernize studies that, from now on, will develop a substantial part of student learning (a minimum of 25%) in companies in the sector where they will soon seek their first job. Its objective is to double the number of young technicians and specialists – to respond to the profiles that the Spanish market will demand from 2025 – and to create an agile and flexible system that assumes the training of the employed and the recycling of the unemployed, as well as the updating of knowledge throughout life.
The bill will have 5.5 billion euros until 2025 to ensure the implementation of the reforms. It aspires, in addition to expanding and modernizing the degrees, to create a minimum of 200,000 places in the training cycles in a four-year period, to accredit in the same period the professional skills of more than three million Spaniards who lack any official certification, and to be the vaccine against early educational abandonment.
The reform merges into a single system the old regulated VET –the one taken by young people in institutes– with programs and courses for continuous training and for employment, often managed by employers, unions or companies. To make change possible, it designs a flexible and cumulative training system, with a strong drive for ‘online’ teaching, which will allow on-demand academic itineraries, especially for those who learn and work at the same time.
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