The new Agency aims to integrate the two different VET subsystems of initial vocational training and vocational training for employment. The purpose is to reverse the existing segmentation between training subsystems that has led to the historical consolidation of differentiated conceptual and administrative reference frameworks, with dynamics and procedures specific to each of these areas.
The Agency will be the main instrument for consolidating the integration of the entire vocational training system: initial, occupational and continuing. Furthermore, it must also play a key role in the definition of a Catalan Dual Vocational Training model. In fact, its functions include fostering relations with the entrepreneurial sector for alternating training, dual training and work placement, and supervising and promoting dual vocational training.
The Agency will make it possible to achieve the strategic integration of vocational training at the Catalan level, as well as to improve it for the future. It also proposes a new sectoral and territorial model for planning the VET offer in Catalonia. The strategic integration of vocational training will be related to six main axes:
- Network of the Vocational Training and Qualification System.
- Integrated Vocational Training Centres.
- Information, guidance and counselling.
- Prospecting and planning.
- Learning models and internships.
- Evaluation and accreditation of professional competences.
The Agency is created as an autonomous body of an administrative nature with its own legal personality. It will remain attached to the Department of the Presidency, and will have the participation of three other Departments: Education; Labour, Social Affairs and Families; and Enterprise and Knowledge. It will also have the participation of the social parters: the trade unions CCOO and UGT, and the employers’ organisations Fomento del Trabajo and Pimec, entities that have already formed part of the Governing Committee of the FPCAT System, constituted at the beginning of 2019. The fact that it is a body governed with the participation of the social partners is one of the most innovative points of this agency.
English