The Government of the Generalitat and the charter school are finalizing the details of an agreement for the contributions of vocational training students in internships. It should be taken into account that, as of January 1, any intern student must be registered with Social Security (SS) to begin contributing, according to the new regulations. However, the Catalan administration argued that it could not discharge these students from the subsidized centers since the latter were privately owned. In the end, and as La Vanguardia has learned, both parties are finalizing an agreement so that the agreed party will be the one to carry out the processing, subject, of course, to some conditions.

What will the procedure be like? Educació, initially, will upload into the qBID application (the app used by the centers to, among other things, manage students’ internships) all the data related to the students’ affiliation to the SS (basically, the number of affiliate). If the student does not have it, they will manage its creation with the SS to later upload the information to the app. Based on these data, the subsidized centers will register the student in the SS and advance the cost of the contribution. This amount will subsequently be reimbursed by Educació, who will have previously received the funds from the Ministry of Education.

Precisely, this ministry has just announced that the contribution of FP scholarship holders will cost the communities 18 euros per student per year starting in 2025. During 2024, it will be the SS and the Ministry of Education that will pay for 100% of the fees. fees (95% SS and 5% Education). In 2025, however, communities will have to assume that 5%.

Melcior Arcarons, former general director of Vocational Training at the Department of Education, hopes that by the time the students who are now in internships return to companies – after the Christmas holidays – the issue “will already be resolved.” And he understands that the majority will not return until the 8th, so there is some margin.

Of course, it emphasizes that there is a difference in criteria between the Generalitat and other communities, such as Valencia, Cantabria or Andalusia, which will assume the processing of the concerted centers. “The Government makes a strict reading of the rule [additional provision 52 of the pension reform],” he maintains.

The regulations specify that “fulfillment of Social Security obligations will correspond to the company, institution or entity in which they are carried out, unless in the agreement or cooperation agreement that, where appropriate, is signed for their implementation It is provided that such obligations will correspond to the training center responsible for the training offer.

Arcarons understands that the Government takes advantage of that last phrase to not assume the management of the quotation of the concerted ones. “They must think, ‘if the law speaks of a responsible training center and that center is not us, then we do not assume it, let the owner do it.'” He states that he does not criticize this position, but he does emphasize that other autonomous administrations, for example, On the contrary, they have made a more flexible reading, assuming the management of the concerted one.

Jesús Martín, head of the UGT of the FP in Catalonia, sees it the same way. “Why has the Community of Madrid, for example, managed everything and not here?” He asks himself.

Education sources explain to La Vanguardia that “materially” they cannot undertake this procedure. They defend that they cannot register, as a public administration, in the SS a student who depends on a subsidized center, yes, but privately owned.

These same sources explain that there are publicly owned centers that have carried out the processing themselves and that the department has created a team of nine technicians to, among other things, carry out the process for those public centers that have not done so. .

There are even companies – maintains Jesús Martín – that have carried out this procedure on their own. “That company that wanted to has already signed up the students. There are those that believe in training.” There are others – he asserts – that, on the contrary, do not. In this sense, he blames them – also the department – “for having left this registration until the last minute.”

Arcarons understands that the best possible solution is to end up automating all procedures “as much as possible.” To begin with, he says, there is a digital platform (qBID) used by all centers in Catalonia where everything from the SS number of each student to the internship calendar will be recorded. “If the necessary information could be transferred to the SS system through a digital gateway, a large part of the work would disappear,” she concludes.