The Public Agency for Professional Training and Qualification of Catalonia is born

The Generalitat has just created the Public Agency for Professional Training and Qualification of Catalonia (FPCAT), an organization that strategically integrates initial vocational training from the educational system and vocational training for employment, promoted with the support of the most representative employer and trade union organizations (Foment del Treball, PIMEC, CC.OO., and UGT). The FPCAT Agency, which will have to address the needs demanded by the labor market with the aim of improving the current professional qualification structure, positions itself as a key tool for the competitiveness of companies and society.

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Qualitative leap in VET in Catalonia

The Government emphasizes that the new entity is essential for the effective management of vocational training in Catalonia and will represent a qualitative change in professional training and qualification policies at a crucial moment when agile and transversal entities are needed.

One of its first tasks will be to deploy the second Plan for the Evaluation and Accreditation of Professional Competencies, which aims to accredit approximately 17,000 people per year. Among the immediate objectives of the FPCAT Agency is also to considerably improve the instruments when studying the needs to address the training deficiencies of citizens and adjust the search for professional profiles by companies.

The new operational structure will allow for a comprehensive evaluation of the VET system in Catalonia and will enable a global action on training centers, information and guidance points, and companies that have apprentices in dual training, among others.

A management model born from dialogue

The FPCAT Agency's management model has been prepared and experimented with throughout the last legislature in permanent dialogue with the different agents involved within the FPCAT System's Steering Committee, which has been responsible for defining the Catalan Strategy for Professional Training and Qualification with a view to the next ten years. Now, with the approval of the decree of the statutes of the new entity, the process to launch the institutional architecture and be able to respond to the country's current challenges culminates.

The agency proposes a sectoral and territorial model for professional training planning. The strategic integration of the two subsystems, initial VET and VET for employment, is related to six main axes: the FPCAT System network; integrated vocational training centers; information, guidance, and advice; prospecting and planning; learning and internship models; and, finally, the evaluation and accreditation of professional competencies.

The FPCAT Agency is an autonomous administrative body with its own legal personality, attached to the Departament de la Presidència, which will also include the participation of the Departaments d'Educació, Treball, Afers Socials i Famílies and Empresa i Coneixement. It is constituted as the governing and coordinating body for the basic services of the professional training and qualification system and for the management of its own services. Its competencies are established in Law 10/2015 on professional training and employment.

The new entity assumes the competencies and functions of the Institut Català de Qualificacions Professionals. As for the until now Consell Català de la Formació Professional, this body is renamed Consell de Formació i Qualificació Professionals de Catalunya.

All information about Professional Training in Catalonia is available on the website fp.gencat.cat.