Jorge had been teaching at a Vocational Training center for four years until, this year, he decided to start at a private university, also to train VET students in Administration and Finance. His job change is the response to the migration of students from classical centers to university campuses. “My school has had to close two training cycles due to lack of students… Many small centers are going to disappear because the vocational training model has taken a radical turn,” this teacher tells ABC, who prefers not to give more data so that identify you in your former job. The numbers enrolled in VET have not stopped growing in recent years and in this 2024-2025 academic year there was an increase of 48,460 students compared to the previous year. The trend is clear: in the last decade, young people who opted for Vocational Training increased by 30%, while those in Baccalaureate did so by 10% and according to data from the Ministry of Education. FP is taking off in Spain, although our country has always been behind the rest of the members of the European Union in number of enrollments. “We have carried a great prejudice, a bad reputation, but the centers managed to reverse it with enviable employability data and, now, vocational training may die of success,” says Santiago García, who was a vocational training teacher at a school for 27 years and Today he is general secretary of CECE, the Spanish Confederation of Teaching Centers. Private universities have launched the sale of 2+2 ‘packages’: in four years the student leaves with his FP and a degree. Universities, especially private ones – although they are also beginning to look public – have launched the sale of vocational training cycles that are offered in a kind of ‘packages’: the student is offered the possibility of completing a higher degree in Two-year Vocational Training with the option of, in another two years, also leaving the university with a bachelor’s degree. «Colleges and institutes, normally, cannot compete with the infrastructure or resources of a campus. The kids are attracted to university social life and prefer a class with thirty classmates, rather than one with ten. Furthermore, teachers at public or private schools are offered salaries above the agreement and the possibility of pursuing a career at the university, finishing with a doctorate… It is normal to change,” Jorge acknowledges. Luis Díaz, professor of Home Automation, Electronics, Computer Science and Programming and assistant to the management at the Colegio Santa María de los Apóstoles isabel permuyBut the classic FP centers have had other competitors beyond the universities: there are companies and foundations that are launching their own official training courses, that is, recognized by Education. In the case of companies, the idea is to create something similar to quarries of workers who start as apprentices and end up staying. Students, in this way, secure employment without having to go through a traditional vocational training center. Some of the ‘business’ training cycles that are gaining the most popularity are for training health technicians, such as, for example, that of Sanitas. But there are also ‘hybrid’ models, very common in the automotive field, where many corporations see an imminent generational change looming. «At Volkswagen we have agreements with 140 educational centers and, within the dual FP, we offer paid internships to students. For us it is a formula to attract talent and, for students, a gateway to attractive, renowned brands,” explains Nacho Fatjón, head of Volkswagen’s Talentia program. The model, we said, is evolving. «A few years ago, the cycles in schools and institutes were completed in July, in the first month of enrollment, but now we have to wait until the end of September, for the second ‘wave’ and end up ‘collecting’ remains of students who did not “They have entered the specialty they wanted,” acknowledges Luis Díaz, who is a professor of Home Automation, Electronics, Computer Science and Programming and assistant director at the Santa María de los Apóstoles School, in Madrid. Díaz believes that vocational training was previously a type of education “more adapted to what was new and what the company required, while the university prioritized the theoretical aspect.” However, he says, “campuses increasingly have more powerful marketing departments, a more business vision and great agreements for internships with the new dual FP. The tables have turned.” This professional fears that with the proliferation of some foundations that can be dismantled as quickly as they are created, the educational structure for teaching vocational training will end: “In universities, in addition to business, there is a desire for training, but there are other courses that are pure speculation and they are multiplying in empty warehouses,” he says. Civil servant mentality and the old discreditSantiago García, from CECE, is more critical of universities and insists that, in Spain, “we have a serious problem because we continue to think that prestige is found exclusively in the university.” García warns that if this ‘boom’ continues, the classic centers will end up disappearing in the long term. However, within these centers there are differences and there are some names, such as the Jesuits, of prestige in the world of vocational training. There are also cooperatives that are being updated to be able to compete with companies and universities. Or students who still find it more comfortable to continue a cycle in the same school or institute where they attended Primary or Secondary. However, in the FP universe, today the saying is truer than ever: renew or die.
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