Today Spain is facing one of its toughest challenges in recent history, the fight against unemployment, which is not just high (20.7% in March, the highest in the OECD, which averages 8%), but also truly complex in terms of its characteristics. The causes of such high unemployment and the difficulties in reducing it in an acceptable period of time are truly difficult to pinpoint. This is because, among other things, many of these causes are not solely related to the crisis, rather they relate to endemic issues for which there are no quick fixes.

The lack of vocational training or unsuitability of training for business needs, appear with every rise in unemployment, though they do not explain the phenomenon in all its aspects. In fact, the unemployed population mixes people with scarce training and highly qualified young people.

However, it is clear that training must play a key role in economic recovery. Industries such as construction will not return to their activity levels for market reasons that are self-evident. Manufacturing and service industry companies have changed their working practices. All of them are evolving towards a competitive model where knowledge is at the core or economic activity. Furthermore, penetration of new technologies is drawing a landscape that is very different from the one existing in Spain to date, and the crisis has caused some uncompetitive factors in the Spanish job market, such as overspecialisation, to suddenly explode, highlighting weaknesses.

Following decades of economic and organisational efforts to take vocational training to as many people as possible, this has not been enough to facilitate change for those losing their jobs in positions or industries that are disappearing or   changing. Even considering that the results have been very positive—remember where this all started and the considerable progress achieved—it is time to improve some key points.

This highly generalised assessment can be made more specific by identifying aspects that need changing in vocational training management. Some are identified by the managing institutions themselves, such as the need to update vocational qualifications. Others seem more immediate.

Today, in a context of unprecedented unemployment in Europe, penetration of vocational training offerings in Spain is very low. It only reaches 6% of the unemployed population. E-content continues to be scarce, where inflexibility is one of its features and disconnection from production another of the great evils that continue to lack the necessary decisive and determined action. And there are proposals to connect training to production more effectively, such as the much called-for involvement of companies in training and certification actions.

Yet there are two major and key points that need changing in vocational training management, seeking effectiveness and commercial and social returns.

The first refers to criteria to establish offerings of training actions. So far the need to leverage approved classrooms and facilities and other inefficient criteria have not carried much weight. The aim of matching the potential and needs of people with the needs of production activity has been sorely lacking.

The second refers to the process of selecting participants. Criteria need to be based on employment guidance and on the necessary adjustment between training actions and true potential and availability of participants. Training actions need to improve employability of participants.

Much progress has been made in recent months with the implementation of Tailored Insertion Roadmaps (IPI) and with the new catalogue of services of the Public Employment Service, set up under Royal Decree Act 3/2011, though it is necessary to regulate, coordinate and systematise an integrated vocational information and guidance system.

From all the foregoing we can summarise some of the key challenges vocational training faces in Spain:

• Extend its penetration, reaching a greater number of people immediately.
• Make its offering flexible, extending e-learning training proposals, multiplying digital content and performance testing.
• Respond to the needs of business, and strengthen the role of companies in management and validation.
• Plan and select participants, focusing on results achieved in employment guidance activities of professionalised services.

To face these vocational training challenges is a technical necessity. Yet today it is also a required exercise within the framework of the vast and lengthy process of the fight against unemployment which promises to be a nightmare.