Vocational Training is, together with Early Childhood Education of the first cycle (0 to three years), the one that grows the most students in Castilla y León, with an increase of 2.56% compared to the last academic year 2023-2024. It is expected that 47,344 students will follow these studies (compared to 46,160 previously).
The President of the Government of Castilla y León, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, also recently announced that the entire FP offer will be double, ensuring that the more than 47,000 students will carry out internships in 12,000 companies. In addition, in this course, the training time will be increased by more than 25%.
The course will be marked by the implementation of the new FP system resulting from the entry into force of Organic Law 3/2022, something to which the Minister of Education, Rocío Lucas, referred, alluding to the fact that state regulations “have generated a lot of bureaucracy” because, “unfortunately, as usual, the Ministry has not approved the development regulations within the established deadlines.” Something that has posed “a serious problem for the autonomous communities to redefine, in a minimum reasonable period of time, the updating of the programs of all training cycles.”
Despite this, Castilla y León has reached “a new record”, according to the Ministry, in the expansion and diversification of the FP offer, with 51 new cycles in public centers. In total, there will be 1,161 groups and 134 different qualifications between the different levels: basic FP, intermediate diploma and higher diploma. The new cycles range from physical conditioning and agro-gardening and floral compositions, to aeromechanical maintenance of turbine helicopters or video-disc-jockey and sound.
There will also be 44 specialization courses that partly explain this increase in the number of students and that focus on topics such as drone piloting, robotics and Big Data, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, among others. All this constitutes a “highly qualified training”, according to Lucas. In addition, Fernández Mañueco also highlighted that the FP of Castilla y León has an employability of 82% and 100% in cycles related to the industry.
