Vocational training: tensions and social dynamics

Abstract

The proportion of graduates in FP has increased considerably in recent decades in Spain, and the economic crisis has increased the proportion of students, because unemployment has lowered the opportunity cost of studying. Increased Vocational Training (VT) graduates have not led to its devaluation, or in terms of skills or employment rate in relation to other educational levels. The VT has been in continuous reforms in recent decades. This is because institutionalization is the result of various unstable social cleavages. The main cleavages are as follows: if the training should be done in schools or other establishments; if you must have more weight formal education or non-formal education; about the selection of students, and finally, how to enhance the prestige of an education that prepares for professions less social prestige university. These cleavages lead to believe that the institutional balance around the VT are doomed to be unstable, and will vary according the diverse social actors involved tend toward either pole