BBVA signs up to the Vocational Training Alliance in Spain

Vocational Training is one of the main catalysts of economic development in the country, and its transformation into a quality, flexible, comprehensive and capitalizable pathway is the ministry's main goal. "Vocational Training is an essential tool in promoting youth employment. The unemployment rate drops to 7.56% among holders of Intermediate Vocational Training qualifications and 6.91% to Advanced Vocational Training qualifications according to data from the State Employment Service", emphasized minister Isabel Celaá when presenting the plan.

Furthermore, the outlook for Spain for 2025 suggest that 49% of workplaces in Europe will require an intermediate qualification, with just 16% involving unskilled work. At present, 25% of people have intermediate qualifications and 35% are considered low skilled. This situation reflects the need for people with intermediate and advanced technical qualifications with professional profiles who are currently unavailable on the job market. The radical transformation of vocational training involves the integration of training and employment; this will make it possible to enhance the connection of business needs and the workplace insertion of young people.

Vocational Training Alliance

"High-quality training is impossible without businesses, just like high-quality businesses are impossible without properly-trained workers. And a country without high-quality vocational training is a country with no future. To this end, for us all to go in the same direction toward the shared goal of better training and better work, we have formed this alliance, which is an alliance of country-wide joint responsibility", asserted Celaá.

The Vocational Training Alliance, which BBVA has signed up to with another 64 large and medium-sized companies, labor union organizations and social entities, will combine forces, create synergies and weave initiatives between government and other government agencies, social players, the business sector and nonprofit organizations to strengthen his new model of Vocational Training.

The Alliance forms part of the Plan to Modernize Vocational Training organized by the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training. As part of this plan, 60,000 vocational training places have been created of the 200,000 expected for 2023 and the workplace skills accreditation procedures that three million workers are likely to benefit from have been made more flexible. Furthermore, the ministry has updated more than 60% of professional qualifications, it has created 63 new and designed 25 new qualifications, most in relation to emerging sectors.

The lines of action in the plan include opening calls for innovation projects for the exchange and dissemination of best practices between training centers and businesses and the creation of the FPConecta platform, which will serve to mobilize the Vocational Training ecosystem made up of all the member entities of this initiative.