The Generalitat will assume the management of Vocational Training (FP) students in unpaid internships, although it will do so only in public centers and not in subsidized ones, as reported yesterday by Minister Anna Simó during her appearance at the Parliament’s Education Commission. .

Education sources informed La Vanguardia that the only written instruction they have is a paragraph from a press release issued by the Ministry of Education and FP last Wednesday. “On the part of the department, a team of 9 technicians is being created who, as of January 1, will be prepared to process the contribution procedures for students at centers owned by the department,” which reach 150,000 students, the note says.

Catalonia requested, like the communities governed by the Popular Party, a new moratorium to manage contributions in view of the imminent date of entry into force of the obligation to contribute for vocational training students during their internship period. The registration period for students who are already in internships or who start them on the first of the year runs from December 21 to January 10.

Navarra, Castilla-La Mancha, Asturias and the Basque Country, in addition to Ceuta and Melilla, already have it underway and next Thursday, the 21st, they will attend a meeting, called by the Ministry of Education and FP, to explain the form in which they have done it. This meeting will be attended by the general directors of vocational training from all the autonomous regions, their technicians, computer scientists, as well as computer scientists from the Social Security Treasury and those responsible for the provincial administrations.

“The procedure is simple, it is a computer solution, but we have called this meeting after seeing the concern of the regional governments,” the general secretary of FP of the Spanish Government, Clara Sanz, told this newspaper yesterday. The statements of the Education Ministers would, according to the secretary, be worrying students and small businesses.

“It cannot be argued that there has not been time, but rather that there has been no desire to take on the task,” says Sanz, “since the communities were informed in May, the measure came into force in October and a moratorium was already requested. January 1, 2024.”

172 previous meetings have been held and the issue is not economic since, according to the general secretary of FP, the autonomies knew, since June, that the cost of the first year was 100% discounted, both in public and subsidized centers.

All Departments of Education have had meetings with Social Security. “In this time, some have done their homework; the rest, no. Now we are on December 18 – yesterday – and we have to run.”

The secretary has explained that social alarm cannot be generated and worry students and companies, especially SMEs that host students, because registration with Social Security can be managed in a simple way, with a modification of the computer application that already all vocational training centers have and that links them to the administration. In the autonomous communities that have implemented it, this computer modification has cost around 15,000 euros.

In this application, the center’s tutor has to include each month the student’s days of practice (not the dates or times) to send it to the public administration and have it transfer this information to Social Security.

In May 2023, an instruction was sent to the autonomies to locate the Social Security number of their students, information that Educació requested last week from Catalan educational centers.

Social Security subsidizes 95% of the administrative cost of registration and the ministry the remaining 5%. Only this year. Starting in 2025, this 5% will be assumed by the autonomies. The maximum cost per student is 18.36 euros per year. Settlements are quarterly. “The money corresponding to the entire year will be transferred to the regional administrations in the month of March,” he assured, “coinciding with the first settlement.”