The Government initially allocated Balears 6 M€ of the Modernization Plan of the FP to create 1,200 new places

The renunciation of a part of these items by the Autonomous Community, announced on Tuesday by the Minister of Education, Pilar Alegría, means that it will no longer receive more than 5 million euros

The Government of Spain allocated to Balears 6 million euros of the Plan for the Modernization of Vocational Training for 2024, within the territorial distribution of about 158 M€ of the European Recovery and Resilience Mechanism (MRR), which was announced last Tuesday by the Minister of Education, Pilar Alegría. The Autonomous Community’s refusal to participate in part of these finalist funds means that it will no longer receive around 5.2 M€.

In particular, according to the proposal for the distribution of the Modernization Plan for this year, the islands were allocated €1.4 million for the evaluation and accreditation of professional skills, with a commitment of 6,110 units, as well as €2.2 million for the resizing of the VET offer with 1,200 new places, and another €1.5 million for 19 new bilingual training cycles of the Middle and Higher Grades, all of which were not finally consolidated by the withdrawal of the Autonomous Community. The item corresponding to the conversion of classrooms into spaces of applied technology will be executed, for an amount of 825,000 euros for Balears, which undertakes to create 15 of these units.

The distribution of the finalist funds for the modernization of the FP is carried out according to the same criteria since the implementation of the plan, in 2020, so this is the fourth consecutive year in which these items are distributed, which have a deadline of execution until December 2025.

The government delegate, Alfonso Rodríguez Badal, pointed out that “it is inexplicable that the lack of management capacity of these funds weakens the chances of a greater and better supply of VET in places such as the islands, where demand is greater than the availability of places”.