The Provincial Director of Education in Melilla, Elena Fernández Treviño, has highlighted the important impulse that Vocational Training (FP) has experienced in the city in recent years and has highlighted its key role in the employment insertion of young people from Melilla and its unstoppable growth in both students and degrees offered.
In an interview with Melilla Television, Treviño explained that currently more than 3,000 students take Vocational Training in Melilla, with an educational offer “that has almost tripled” with the incorporation of 29 new degrees in the last five years, which has meant a “multidimensional leap” in the commitment to this training path.
The Provincial Director has highlighted the Dual VET model, “a very important novelty”, implemented for the first time in Melilla this course, which allows students to carry out internships in companies from the first year, combining theoretical training and practical experience in the workplace.
Thus, he highlighted “the leap and the bet that this Government has made for FP”. “The idea is to continue to open the way, to do so all secondary schools offering VET courses as an alternative to study,” he said.
FP: flexible and modular structure
On the other hand, Fernández Treviño has explained the operation of the new FP model as a “big Russian doll that decomposes from the smallest training units to the higher cycles, everything serves for an accreditation of competences”.
In this sense, he has stressed that any student can study a short learning unit and obtain an official certificate of professional competences that allows them to access the labor market. This accreditation is cumulative and can be progressively completed until complete degrees of basic, middle or higher degree are reached.
“This is a real revolution, because it also allows many people with work experience in trades — but without official qualifications — to certify their skills and improve their employability,” he said.
Break with the old idea of FP
For all these reasons, the Provincial Director stressed the need to change the traditional perception of VET, remembering that “previously it was said that it was for those who did not serve to study”. “This has nothing to do with the current and modern concept of how we conceive Vocational Training,” he said.
In fact, it has highlighted the fact that the Melillense VET has high levels of job insertion thanks to the collaboration between educational centers, local companies, the SEPE, social agents and the Ministry. Faced with the criticism of the PP, he has stressed that in Melilla it is working “wonderfully”, with a great projection.
In this regard, he pointed out that around a hundred companies from Melilla are actively involved in the development of Dual VET, despite the limitations implied by the size of the local business fabric, and has valued the involvement of all parties to “continue opening the way and multiplying opportunities”.
Inclusive education
The highest representative of the Ministry of Education in Melilla has also highlighted the diversification of the training offer, with special attention to high-demand sectors such as the social and health sector, where waiting lists are registered every year.
He also mentioned the efforts made to include students with special educational needs in VET, promoting inclusive education. “We are committed to inclusive education, also investing in these students as we are doing in Primary and Secondary, so that this accompaniment and transition to adult life is guaranteed from the educational system,” he said.
Treviño also recalled that this year Melilla held its first Conference on Good Teaching Practices, where schools shared their projects and achievements, such as the successful Bakery and Pastry cycle, which offers practical training to students with functional diversity and which, he said, exemplifies the values of inclusion and professionalization that characterize the new Melilla VET.