- Read with astonishment the article published by ARGIA “Irregularities in the financing of vocational training?”. But we were shocked to get the instruction referred to in the article, which was sent to the vocational training centers. It is incredible that a public administration official should write such an instruction. Or it may be that until now this is a very standardized and internalized activity in Vocational Training, without being aware of the requirements to follow when there is public money in the Public Administration and of the specific rules of public calls and program development, perhaps driven by the inertia that previously worked in the Direction of Professional Training and now in the Vice-Office of Free Affairs. But the example is curious.
When we began to ask for clarification, when we received the first answers and when we saw that the Lehendakari referred the issue directly to the Department of Education and, more specifically, to the Vice-Ministry of Education and that, in response to the Vice-Ministry, the Lehendakari knows nothing and assumes responsibility... We did not clarify anything, we justified and blurred the issue in their answers....... We confirmed this when we saw in the Basque Parliament that the hearing of the Minister for Education and Vice-Minister for Education, convened on 10 April, was postponed due to agenda problems. It is curious precisely the day on which the Member comes to raise another issue. How long will the agenda problems last? Until the return of the May elections? Or to fix the issue, change the pattern, approve the decree of the TKgune program and make unfair competition that they call “network of centers and companies”, a real collaboration, training and transformation in network until they order the home? If so, less bad.
But the main question is: Should this model be legalised? In other words, if the centre and the company are founded on the provision of services by the centre and the payment of invoices by the companies, should this programme or extraordinary financing be legalised? In this case, the centers must be discharged from the Economic Activities Tax. Should they be discharged from the Professional Training they provide in the Economic Activities Tax of each family? If the services they offer are subject to VAT, how do they charge it and how do they declare it? How has VAT been avoided so far? Can tax fraud be channelled and legalised from the institutions?
Although the answers sent from the FP Vice-President seek to confuse parliamentarians with the articles of various laws and general decrees, once these articles have been read, the lack of regulation of this particular programme is evident. Moreover, in the Public Administration, it is common for the programme to be carried out by means of a call for access to different aids, at least in the other stages of the Department of Education.
In addition to regular funding, the centres should submit to the calls for access to the various programmes and aids. Not in the TKgune program! Neither the schools, nor the companies. Here is a list of the companies they decide on. And what is the criterion? Why do some companies and not others? Although the door is open for schools to come, if they so decide, to other companies, but without additional funding. Additional money for visits, projects and services. Objective: a four-visit project and a five-project service. The teaching staff as a commercial. And all of this has been given the name of network, collaboration, transfer of innovation. Is this and should it be cooperation with companies from VET centres, networking? Is this not called unfair competition? Would this not discourage students leaving VET centres at a very low price?
Some of the statements in the instruction are also serious. For example: “We must avoid mentioning that the visits and project definition are funded.” Do you want to fool small businesses?
But how is everybody's public money used? The Instruction states that in order to enjoy the aid of 25% of Lehendakaritza, the invoice will be presented to the company for the value of 100% of the service, indicating that the aid of 25% will be applied to it. Invoices for training and advice and not for innovation. And how is it invoiced in the integrated centers? In other schools? When I read all of this, I understood the rush a couple of years ago to become an integrated center to have a NIF of its own. But the other center models have the government's NIF, right? The centers are creating Foundations. But then, how many Foundations of the Vice Ministry must be promoted, as many centers as foundations, will be dealt with in this way and that will be the legal loophole?
The Vice-Office of FP has started a risky “game” with multiple vertices, transforming on the one hand the functions of the educational centers and teachers in the name of innovation and the network, until giving the professors commercial functions. We could understand that the VET centres and the other stages cannot function the same, but not in these modalities.
Finally, the Vice-Ministry of Vocational Training is working in an outstanding way both at the Basque and international levels in the collective imaginary that seeks to be a citizen of Vocational Training. It sells the idea well. In addition to taking on the responsibilities of what has now been done, the Government should, beyond the idea, order and direct the management of Vocational Training, which is so unknown among the citizens; and we have no excuse that it has not so far had a legal framework. Firstly, because public responsibilities require direct management of public money.