Vocational education and training in Spain: steady improvement and increasing value

In this study, we argue that vocational education and training in Spain have increased their status and value over the past four decades at a steady and consistent pace. This pace has been perhaps too slow for the wishes of some but has been properly grounded on a wide consensus among all involved stakeholders (companies, union representatives and administrations of education and labour), as well as a unique consensus among the large political parties in a way that has not been possible with any other educational policy. Moreover, we contend that this school-based system has been able to respond to the demands of the labour market and has given employers great decision-making power in terms of defining vocational qualifications, including the levels and content as well as requirements of the vocational curricula, expressed in units of competence and expected learning outcomes. Reforms have built upon previous ones, with the only exception occurring in 2013. This one exception as disturbed the system by changing the structural location of basic vocational education and through the top-down mandate of a dual model of vocational education and training (VET), which will be difficult to expand to the system as a whole.