Speech at event to present Plan to Modernise Vocational Training

Moncloa Palace, Madrid

PEDRO SÁNCHEZ, President of the Government of Spain

Firstly, good day to you all and I thank you for having freed up a space in your busy schedules and for coming from different parts of Spain to be here today in your home, because Moncloa Palace is a home to all of you. And I like to remind you of this because, on many occasions, I have the feeling that that this is indeed an imposition to come here, to speak before the Fourth Vice-President of the Government and Minister for Ecological Transition, the Third Vice-President of the Government and Minister for Economic Affairs, the Minister for Education and Vocational Training - I always like to underline Vocational Training - but, in short, this is an open house, the home of all our citizens and I like to often remind you of this.

A good day to all the representatives of social organisations, trade unions, business organisations, the Chamber of Commerce, business owners - very important to the economic and business development of our country, and also to the teachers, including those that teach vocational training.

Good day to you all.

I want to start this speech - it will be a little long because I want to outline some of the features of the Vocational Training Plan that I feel are important - by making a personal reference that caught my attention, at a time in the pandemic that we have gone through, or are still going through, because unfortunately it is not yet over.

On 8 April, there was a web page that caught my attention, which is of the Association of Vocational Training Centre, which published a quite striking list that says a lot about what we have gone through and what this represented at that time for the whole of Spanish society.

This web page displayed the Villaverde IES in Madrid, the Montijo IES in Extremadura, the CIVOCATIONAL Hotel and Catering and Tourism TRAINING Centre in Gijón, and also the César Manrique CIVOCATIONAL TRAINING Centre in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, to name just a few of the most illustrative or the ones that most caught my attention. These were all news for the same reason, which is that they engaged all their equipment, all their know-how, all their efforts, which was announced then, to the manufacture of material for hospital healthcare workers, health centres, police officers, civil protection officers and care workers. They are, in short, a perfect example of adaptation, of entrepreneurship and, above all, at such a critical time as we are going through as a society, of social commitment which is, in summary, what I feel is the hallmark of Vocational Training in our country.

Hence, I would like to start my speech by thanking these young people, these workers, these teachers for their solidarity and initiative in those terrible days of this cursed pandemic which is affecting all of humanity. In the same way as they worked for us, it is only fair that we work for them, for their future, to make Vocational Training more dignified. And today we remind them with pride and also with inspiration, because this is, in the end, what they contributed to the whole of society - their inspiration.

In these recent weeks, the government has been making a decisive effort to weave a broad network of agreements, as Professor Anton said to us before, in different areas of our economic, social, teaching and institutional life. A process that represents something very important at this time, as the Vice-President of the CEOE business organisation rightly said, which is the unity of the whole of Spanish society regarding the same goal, which is to recover as soon as possible, strongly and sustainably, as strongly as possible, from these socio-economic effects of the COVID-19 crisis, and do so without recovering what we had before, but in the awareness that this pandemic has speeded up changes in digital society and in many other areas, and that we must provide a response through the transformation of our productive sector, looking forward rather than just back, to recover something which will be valuable, to a great extent, in the future, and that we wish to enhance, and make sustainable, and perform this transformation as soon as possible.

In short, what we need is to all work under one premise, which is that if Spain wants, then Spain can. And it can do this, both within Spain and in Europe. Moreover, we must focus on the goal, which Spanish society is very good at doing, and believe in ourselves. Earlier when I came here I was speaking with my secretary in the building at Moncloa Palace. Her husband is a robotics teacher, and there are indeed some sectors that were somewhat harmed as a result of the digital revolution we have been going through in recent years, over this last decade, and it is clear that the technological changes and the ecological transition start to be something that is shared by Spanish society as a whole, whether business owners of large, medium or small companies, and by workers themselves.

Hence, I believe that if we want the economic recovery to last more than one or two years, and be sustained over time, then we will clearly have to do our homework in relation to sustainability, to digitalisation, to social inclusivity and clearly to the development of human capital, to the training, both of young people, of students, and also of workers.

That is what we are doing through this public commitment, which we are all called to under this National Vocational Training Plan.

On this occasion, moreover, we are doing this together with representatives of trade unions, business organisations, teachers, students, leading figures in the world of finance and economic, with very powerful business owners in our country, to enter into an agreement that amounts to - I also want to stress this, precisely talking to the Minister for Education - a genuine renovation, I would say renewal, of Vocational Training in our country. This is a measure of tremendous importance because when we talk about education, when we talk about training, when we talk about entrepreneurship, when we talk about employability, we are focusing on the root of the structural challenges that Spain must tackle in the years to come.

Let me give you a few figures, some of which have already been announced by the Vice-President of the CEOE, but which I feel are also important for me to mention:

• Over the last decade, the percentage of students that have opted for Vocational Training has grown by 77%. In other words, there are a great many young people who want to study Vocational Training, who see this, as we have heard today, as a vehicle, firstly, to find out what their interests are, their vocations, and secondly, to realise this through training and ultimately in a job.

But despite this growing by 77% over recent years, our country unfortunately has one of the worst rates of education in Vocational Training - medium grade VT I mean - 12% compared with the OECD average of 26%, and compared with the European Union average of 29%, almost 30%. In other words, we have a long path to go down over the coming years. And we don't have much time because the forecasts for Spain for the year 2025, so soon, identify that 49% of jobs that will be offered in the labour market will require an intermediate level qualification, while only 14% of these jobs will require a low qualification. So with only five years to go, we don't even have 26% of people with an intermediate level qualification, but we have 35% of people with a low qualification. So we can see the leap we must take, but also the tremendous potential and opportunity we have, in a country, as you rightly said, that has an unemployment rate above 30% of young people, who are precisely our country's future.

• 63% of our companies have problems covering their job offers with candidates with the right training.

• In 2018, that is, two years ago, for the first time in nine years, job offers that required a VOCATIONAL TRAINING qualification (42%) exceeded those that required a university degree (which stood at 38.5%). And the trend continues. Not just in Spain, we are also seeing many people, more young people in the United States, studying Vocational Training, technical training, intermediate qualifications rather than higher education. At the same time, only 7.35% of young people with a Vocational Training qualification are unemployed, as has been mentioned in various speeches.

As in so many other fields, the pandemic, as I said before, has meant that national agendas have been significantly speeded up. Now is the time for Vocational Training. And with it, as the Chairman of Bankia rightly said, we are opening up the second phase of the Strategic Vocational Training Plan that we presented in 2018, thanks to Isabel's leadership - the Minister for Education and Vocational Training - who believes so strongly in Vocational Training. A phase which, given the new situation caused by the pandemic, includes a Vocational Training Plan to enhance economic and social growth and employability. Our mission can be summed up in the simple yet powerful idea that it has great future potential to create an eco-system to relaunch the economy through a commitment to human capital and talent through Vocational Training, taking into account that quality Vocational Training does not exist without companies, which is why this event is so important, and hence I once again thank those renowned figures who have come here despite their busy schedules, since they have given their time to come to this event and bear witness to their commitment to Vocational Training, and to public-private collaboration that I feel is so decisive to the success of this venture we are embarking on. That is why we want to call on you to develop this Plan, with all the will-power and knowledge of the social stakeholders, business owners, the third sector, which is also so important, training centres, teachers and coaches. Because it is only through participation and co-responsibility that we can build Vocational Training to be what our young people deserve.

There are two new features of this second phase of this National Vocational Training Plan that we present today.

The first, as Professor Costa said, is money, the budgets, economic funding, which is important because I imagine that you have been present and attended many presentations of national vocational training plans, but they have always lacked a budgetary commitment, which at the end of the day is what counts in both the private and the public world.

The Plan has a financial provision of 1.5 billion euros, and I wish to emphasise this point, because it not only means a commitment, but also because this shows that this is the most ambitious plan ever in terms of a budgetary allocation to Vocational Training in our democratic history. 1.5 billion euros. And I will tell you something else - this may be extended precisely due to the Recovery Fund that we have fortunately been able to agree during some intense marathon negotiations, but which finally proved fruitful in Brussels.

And the second new feature is that we also want to give this internationalisation perspective that the Professor mentioned earlier in his speech. In other words,

the 1.5 billion euros must go into enhancing the prestige, modernising and making Vocational Training more dignified.

VT must also be bilingual - a decisive step must be taken towards making it bilingual. Courses must be taught in Spanish, in the co-official languages in those regions that have their own language, but we must also offer the possibility of teaching some modules, some subjects, in English. Because English is the universal language, above all for the generations represented here. Consequently, they will be some bilingual qualifications - we will begin with English because it is strategic, but we also want this to be expanded to other languages, such as French, German and even Portuguese. I believe that these are languages that are worthwhile and worthy of our consideration. Hence, international Vocational Training, with training centres in other countries, where a qualification can be valid in other countries.

We are also going to increase VT, and the minister and I have spoken a lot about this, for the unemployed and also for those in work, catering for the real needs of requalifying the active population. This Plan will provide for extraordinary funding adapted to the needs of companies and their workforces to modernise, and of the unemployed to redirect their professional pathway.

The Strategic Plan is sound, because it has a sound budget, a sound economic profile and its ambition is reflected in 11 areas of action.

I promise to be very brief on each one of them but I wish to mention them and explain them all, because each one is of equal importance, at least for the government, and I am convinced that for you as well.

1. Recognition and accreditation of basic and professional skills acquired through work experience.

This is key. 48% of the active population in our country lack formal recognition of their professional skills, even though they possess them. And this is not right. 48% of the active population. Accreditation of professional skills through an open and permanent system will enhance the employability of many workers, of millions of workers, and provide an incentive for their continuous training. We must boost this and we want to do this through the regional governments. We aspire to accredit the skills of 40% of the population in the next four years, to which end we will allocate a budget of 853 million euros.

This is key to me. We must boost accreditation and recognition. This is one of the tasks that have been pending for a very long time. When José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was President of the Government they was talk of accreditation, and since then we have been at a standstill and deadlocked in this situation, which must be resolved.

2. Flexibility and accessibility to training through a unique system for Vocational Training.

I think that if we can take stock objectively, and not along party lines, of how VT has worked over recent years, then it is clear, at least this is the view of the Government of Spain, that the division of VT since 2009 into two sub-systems - education and employment - has proven to be ineffective. That is why the first measure to adopt is the integration of the two pathways into a single Vocational Training system, with an increase in a flexible and modular offer at centres and in companies which provides a response to the needs of people at all times.

We also want, because this is a government committed to the demographic challenge, for Vocational Training to reach all corners of Spain, including those local authorities with less access to training. To achieve that, we are going to increase the Aulas Mentor (non-regulated online training programmes aimed at people over the age of 18 in rural areas) to reach some 3,000 local authorities in the next four years. And to do that, we are going to support this initiative with an allocation of 135 million euros.

3. Digitalisation and Vocational Training. This is clearly key. Remember that at a Council of Ministers, and I am not breaching the confidentiality of the Council of Ministers, the Third Vice-President of the Government and Minister for Economic Affairs and Digital Transition, spoke, in recognition of the work of the Minister for Education, of all the agreements that are being taken by the Council of Ministers to enhance the adaptation and modernisation of Vocational Training courses, which are not on the radar of public opinion in a widespread fashion, which go unnoticed in the news, but which, little by little, the Minister for Education and Vocational Training is pushing through the Council of Ministers and making progress on gradually. And I also want to recognise that work.

We have been implementing our Vocational Training with digital qualifications, ranging from Intelligent manufacturing to Cyber-security, 5G infrastructures, Artificial intelligence and Big data to Electric vehicles. This is absolutely up-to-date training designed with the productive sector.

Our commitment is to develop the digital skills of all professionals in all sectors. We are already including an applied digitalisation training module to all qualifications and to the whole range of our training offer, for both those in work and the unemployed, as well as a la carte training plans for the digitalisation of the workforce of companies.

Vocational Training teachers will also play a leading role in training, facilitating all teachers with specific training in applied digitalisation to the whole profession within a period of two years. To do that, we will allocate 5 million euros to this Plan to achieve this goal.

4. Innovation and Vocational Training. This has already been mentioned by other speakers. The Plan promotes specific measures to increase our innovative capacity, such as the opening of technology hubs, the innovation cluster regarding Vocational Training centres and companies associated with this, the identification of a network of "centres of innovative excellence", and the creation of the VT CONECTA platform, which will lead to relations and exchanges between Vocational Training centres, companies, social stakeholders and public authorities… To achieve this, we will allocate 61 million euros to this goal.

5. Entrepreneurship and Vocational Training. 21 million euros will be allocated to the inclusion of entrepreneurship in Vocational Training qualifications and projects.

6. The renewal of the training list and the definition of strategic sectors. We are already doing this, but, in this second phase, what we are doing is identifying 11 strategic sectors, in different areas, both for technology and services, which are a priority in the renewal of VT qualifications. We are going to thus speed up this process that began in 2018, to respond quickly to the clear new demands of the productive sectors and the need for the training of their human capital. To do that, we will allocate 800,000 euros to this goal.

7. The rescaling of the Vocational Training offer. This has already been mentioned. Vocational Training has suffered an injustice, which is the social perception of this form of teaching as a second class pathway, designed for young people that are not capable of continuing with their academic studies. And this has damaged the perception, both by students and by families, and also by the education and business authorities, of Vocational Training, which is a phenomenon that has led to the dysfunction of our labour market, making us weaker than our competitors. And there you have the employability rates of those Vocational Training qualifications vis-à-vis other types of studies.

Nowadays, Vocational Training courses compete successfully and are acquiring a growing prestige. The very high employability rates, labour market insertion rates, bear witness to this, which is why the Plan will allocate 375 million euros to the creation, over the next four years, of some 200,000 new places on Vocational Training courses in the most dynamic sectors of our economy.

8. Boosting Dual Vocational Training, incorporating companies from all sectors, including small companies, because small and micro-companies are fundamental in our business eco-systems, and consequently to the Vocational Training eco-system, extending the duration of the training module at work centres and creating a specific form of contract for qualifications for young people aged 16 to 20.

This is one of the issues that I have shared on many occasions with some concern. Minister Celaá has said this to me on many occasions, regarding how young people drop out of their studies because they are called by companies to find a job. So, what we need is to create a specific type of contract for qualifications for young people aged 16 to 20 in order to guarantee professional qualifications for young people that drop out of the education system.

9. Vocational Training Centres as organisers of applied technology, innovation and creativity networks and support structures. The application of the Plan will mean reassessing the importance of Vocational Training in the educational and labour architecture of the country, highlighting its specific nature. It is thus essential for Vocational Training classrooms and centres to simulate working environments and for professionals who are specialists in productive sectors to be included among teaching staff, to facilitate a permanent flow of knowledge transfer, as the professor rightly said earlier. A total investment of 47 million euros has been assigned to this end.

10. The tenth area of action is professional career guidance. We know that those countries with a strong system of professional guidance have lower early school and post-compulsory education drop-out rates. The Plan seeks to step up professional guidance as a fundamental aspect of tailored support, including this in a more integrated way in the education system and consequently, career guidance councillors must play a more important role in the new Vocational Training system. I have had the chance at some Vocational Training meetings to listen to the claims from career guidance councillors from throughout the whole Vocational Training system and I believe that this precisely provides a response to this demand.

And lastly, the Plan contains a specific provision of 1 million euros to develop an instrument to assess the quality of the system.

And I feel that it is also very important to conduct a self-assessment to see exactly what aspects need to be improved now and in the future.

As a result of implementing this, we will introduce Vocational Training quality certifications for centres and companies.

In short, I am convinced that we are looking at an extremely ambitious agreement, made from a conviction that by doing this we are addressing one of the key elements that hinders the potential growth of our economy, and the future of our country, because we are primarily talking about young people and the progress of Spain.

I want to end by calling for the recognition of the Plan we present today.

We are calling for public recognition of what we are presenting by everyone. We must be capable of understanding and conveying the real importance of these actions, because they are very transforming. We must calibrate the real weight of the political agenda, not only according to the near future, which is clearly important, but also the true significance of certain measures and what they also offer to the whole of society according to their effects in the medium and long term.

Today, this significance is very present in the words of all the speakers here and in the content of the Plan we are presenting. After the automotive sector, tourism, science and innovation, it is now time to boost quality, bilingual Vocational Training.

We have our ideas very clear, thanks also to contributions from companies, and from the education community. When we speak about bilingual Vocational Training, we are talking about jobs, we are talking about training, we are talking about creating wealth, about setting up companies, about driving business, social well-being and the inclusive prosperity that the professor mentioned earlier.

In short, when we talk about Vocational Training, we are talking about a brilliant future for our country. And that is, in short, the Spain in which we all believe, over and above who we may vote for or our beliefs and ideologies. The Spain we believe in is the Spain of qualified jobs, of international companies. The Spain we believe in is the Spain that has not resigned itself in these tough months of the pandemic, which is still evolving. The Spain we believe in is the Spain that enjoys life-long learning. The Spain we believe in is the Spain we are calling for, which is the Spain of Vocational Training.

So congratulations to everyone, thanks again for making a space in your schedules and for coming to the home of everyone, here in Moncloa Palace.

(Transcript edited by State Secretariat for Communication)

Non official translation