Nearly 15,000 students go on vacation without a guaranteed vocational training place.
The bottleneck remains, although it is smaller than last year, when 31,000 students were left without a place.
BarcelonaThe bottleneck remains, despite narrowing compared to last year. Nearly 15,000 (14,840) students are heading into the summer without a place assigned to study for a mid-level or advanced vocational training (VT) degree, despite having pre-registered within the established deadlines. 31,000 students saw the course begin without them having a place.
However, it is important to remember that the process is still open and places can still be assigned and enrollment can continue in September. In fact, students who have been assigned places—43,722 in intermediate level and 37,757 in advanced level—have until September 4 to enroll. It will be after this last round of enrollment when we will know how many empty seats remain in the vocational training classrooms, and on September 8, a map will be published showing the vacancies available for those who have not yet obtained a place.
On the other hand, the provisional estimate of the situation after the end of the place allocation process in July does not necessarily mean that there are more than 14,000 students left hanging: the Ministry of Education reminds us that some of these students without an assigned vocational training place have already enrolled in high school or will opt for the...
This year, the status of these students became known at the end of July, unlike last year, when pre-registration and enrollment rounds were still taking place in September. Of the nearly 15,000 students waiting for a place, 6,910 are in intermediate level, in which 86.4% of students who pre-registered have been assigned a place. At the same time, up to 7,930 students will have to wait to get a place in higher level vocational training, a stage in which 82.6% of students who had pre-registered have been assigned a place. All in all, 14,840 students will have to wait until September to see if they are assigned a place in a vocational training degree.
To avoid the chaos of last year, when the school year began with more than 30,000 students waiting for a vocational training place, this year Education modified the deadlines and procedure for pre-registering for FP so that the maximum number of students would have a place assigned by the end of July: broadly speaking, pre-registration began earlier, and could be done onlineand the option to decline a place was given if one did not wish to enroll in the assigned courses, allowing the department to re-enter the rejected vacancy and assign it to another student. In addition, 7,500 new places were opened.
Despite the ongoing disarray in the system when it comes to allocating places in vocational training, 81,479 applications have been allocated this year, a record figure that represents a 4.6% increase in assignments to intermediate levels and a 3.9% increase in assignments to advanced levels. One of the key factors in achieving what Minister Esther Niubó described as a "success" has been the monitoring of applications that did not meet the requirements this year, as up to 15,000 students were left without a place for this reason last year. This year, so far, 11,521 applications have been detected that did not meet the requirements and have therefore been excluded from the place allocation process.
Educació attributes this decrease in applications that did not meet the requirements to a new algorithm that allows grades to be recovered and to improved and increased communication with applicants seeking entry to a vocational training level to resolve doubts and remind them of deadlines.
Nursing and Finance Assistant, the most in-demand
This Tuesday, Educació also published data on which courses have been the most requested. At the intermediate level, the podium is occupied by far by the auxiliary nursing care course with 9,152 applications, followed by administrative management (5,007), microcomputer systems and networks (4,721), and guidance in the natural environment and leisure (3,545).
As for the advanced levels, administration and finance is the course with the highest demand (4,273), followed by early childhood education (4,038), social integration (2,368), and marketing and advertising (2,228).