The territorial delegate of Employment, Enterprise and Self-Employment, Amós García Hueso, has informed of the publication in the BOJA of the call for a new programme of subsidies for entities that provide free Vocational Training for Employment actions and preferably aimed at the unemployed, which will have a budget of 2,060,000 euros in the province of Almeria and will allow participating students to access certificates of professionalism in some 400 training specialties.
Amós García has indicated that «the specialities are aimed at meeting the needs of SMEs in our province to improve the employability of the unemployed and also the competitiveness of our companies».
The call published in the Official Gazette of the Andalusian Regional Government (https://juntadeandalucia.es/boja/2024/17/1) for these grants, which are on a competitive basis, states that the deadline for submitting applications will be extended for 20 calendar days.
Public and private training entities that have facilities in the autonomous community of Andalusia, or a technological platform for e-learning, duly registered or accredited in the Register of Vocational Training Centres and Entities for Employment in Andalusia, and in the State Register of Training Entities, according to their modality, for each of the training specialities applied for, may apply for these subsidies.
In the case of e-learning and blended learning, they must have centres in Andalusia for the corresponding classroom hours. They must also guarantee that they have adequate human resources and the necessary material resources to carry out the activity for which the subsidy is requested.
Among the novelties that can be highlighted in this call for proposals is an improvement in the payment to the entities so that they have to assume less financing costs. Whereas previously 50% of the training activity was paid as an advance payment, now 70% will be paid in advance and 30% at the end of the training activity. An annex is also included with the specific specialities for which training actions can be given in order to obtain the certificates of professionalism, with specific data on cost, number of students and training hours. This annex has around 400 specialities that are among the most demanded by the labour market.
Priority specialities in Almeria
Specifically for Almeria there are 9 specialities detected as priorities in the studies of training needs in the province, in the branches of tourism, electrical installations, natural stone and the food industry. These are the specialities of guiding in dry or aquatic canyons, guiding equestrian itineraries in rural areas, guiding in low and medium mountain itineraries, lifeguarding in natural aquatic spaces, development of industrial automation system projects, natural stone processing, design and coordination of natural stone projects, craftsmanship and restoration works in natural stone and enotechnics.
Likewise, the system of modules has been implemented to obtain the economic cost of each training action in an objective way, as well as to facilitate the justification of the delivery of the courses. It is based on the technical report «Obtaining the scale of unit costs of vocational training actions for employment of the Andalusian Regional Government», carried out by the entity ESI SL, in August 2023, according to objective criteria that take into account, among other aspects, the average market values of the different components of the costs of the training activity, depending on the training speciality and the mode of delivery.
Beneficiaries
The training actions will be aimed primarily at unemployed people over eighteen years of age and registered in the Andalusian Employment Service, but employed workers may also participate in a maximum percentage of 30% for each training action, provided that there are no registrations of unemployed people who have been admitted.
They must start within a maximum period of two months from the publication of the decision granting the subsidy, and they must also be carried out within a maximum period of twelve months.
The subsidy will cover direct and indirect costs, such as the remuneration of training staff and tutor-trainers; the cost of depreciation of teaching equipment and technological platforms, as well as the rental or leasing of the same; the cost of teaching resources, as well as the cost of consumables used in carrying out the training activities.
The Regional Ministry of Employment, Enterprise and Self-Employment recovered Vocational Training for Employment during the last legislature, which has already led to the training of more than 41,000 unemployed people, around 12,000 employed people and some 1,200 participants in training programmes in alternation with employment. For this year 2024, the Training for Employment programme, the third largest in the Regional Ministry’s budgets, will increase by 13.9% to 287 million, 35 million more than in 2023.