Vocational students' work experience and other education reforms planned

STUDENTS taking the vocational training and education route in Spanish schools and colleges will carry out work experience as part of their course, which will count towards their eventual pension plans, the ministry of education has announced.

Pilar Alegría, in charge, says the government intends to invest €7.5 billion on covering 90% of teenagers' 'stamp', or Social Security contributions until 2025 inclusive – backdated to 2020 - with the remaining 10% covered by their work experience providers.

This means they will be eligible for contributory benefits, such as dole money, maternity and paternity leave and sick pay – which are all earnings-related, meaning they are higher than the 'basic' benefits provided instead by the State for these contingencies – and their work experience through their training will also count towards their eventual State retirement pension.

Sra Alegría says this will start from the new 2022-2023 academic year, although she is in talks with a network of companies to agree on how it will work out long term and how the scheme can be extended.

In the meantime, her department has added 28 new subject lines to Spain's vocational training route, designed with considerable industry input, and freed up over 130,000 places for students.

Currently, the vocational education and training route provides qualifications recognised in 119 different industries.

Pilar Alegría stresses the scheme is valuable in increasing 'employability' among students, particularly as it covers 'soft skills' like teamwork and interpersonal communication, and peripheral skills like digital competence, health and safety, and risk management.

Other key areas of education Pilar Alegría wants to focus on imminently include reforming the teaching profession – through retraining, and restructure of existing practices – dramatically reducing class numbers, which she says is 'absolutely essential' to guarantee 'quality schooling', and addressing school 'failure rate'.

In Spain, if a child does not reach the pass mark for a certain number of subjects, including core subjects, he or she will have to repeat the school year – and, at present, can still leave at 16 without even having passed their final ESO exams.

Sra Alegría stresses that the majority of 'repeating' pupils do so 'due to their social and family conditions', and not because they have not worked or studied enough.

She says that 'the most productive countries are those with the best-trained workforces', and that 'the best educational systems' are the ones which have 'the highest quality of teaching staff'.

What is Spain's vocational training and education, or 'FP' system

Unlike a generation or two ago, choosing a 'vocational' route does not mean a person has 'limited academic aptitude', nor does it bar them from academic studies in the future or force them to start again from scratch to achieve it.

These two structures now exist side by side, are equally valued, and one provides credit exemption from another, allowing students to 'change their minds' without 'wasting' what they have already learned or achieved.

The FP, or Formación Profesional, route is similar to the UK's BTEC scheme, meaning it is taken in place of A-levels or similar academic sixth-form studies, but is valid for university entry.

Once the age 16-18 qualification has been achieved, the student has the option to continue for another year, getting the equivalent of a third of a degree, or two years, which would, in the case of a BTEC, be two-thirds of a degree.

Spain's FP system is similar: The FP Grado Medio is the sixth-form 'replacement', and a Grado Superior gives 120 European Credit Transfer (ECT) points, the equivalent of 240 undergraduate points in Britain or, in Spain, two-and-a-half years of a four-year degree.

With an FP Grado Superior, students in Spain can enter university either in their own country, adding one-and-a-half academic years to get a full degree, or attend selected universities in the UK, The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Finland, studying for a year – in all cases, entirely in English – to complete a degree.

In Spain, an undergraduate degree is four years and a master's degree is one year, which means anyone in the UK who has studied full-time until they complete a master's will have the same number of years under their belts: Three for their Bachelor's degree, and two for a master's.

Students with an FP Grado Superior can enter university in Spain directly halfway through the third year of their four-year course, without having to take any other kind of access course or pass traditional sixth-form exams.

The FP scheme, like the BTEC in Britain, have been lauded for their 'flexible' and 'inclusive' nature for 'late bloomers' or the 'undecided' – a teen who does not feel ready for further academic study post-16 can train in their chosen future career, will still come out with equivalent qualifications as a sixth-former after two years and, if they continue in the same line of training, can trade their credits in for a degree if their academic maturity comes later.

Meanwhile, even if they do not, these qualifications are directly work-based and respond to the needs of the job market in their specialist field.

Whilst initially unpopular, the idea of children studying an FP Básica from age 14 to 16 approximately in place of their ESO, or GCSEs – considered by many to be a 'weeding out' and deciding from an inappropriately young age how much potential or otherwise a student had - a move in 2017 sought to redress this: Teens who pass their FP Básica, which covers core maths and language skills at the same time as vocational training, would automatically get their ESO qualification without taking extra exams.

If their performance in FP Básica falls short of the level required for an ESO, they may have to take short courses or additional subjects, but a child who completes their vocational qualification with across-the-board pass marks will be considered to have achieved their compulsory education.

It means that if they change their minds about their path in life, their ESO will give them access to conventional sixth-form or Bachillerato studies.