Occupational qualifications: a hinge between employment and training

Abstract

The National Qualifications and Vocational Training System consists of a set of instruments and schemes necessary to promote and implement the integration of vocational training offers, made through the National Catalogue of Occupational Qualifications, as well as a Modular Catalogue of Vocational Training. It also deals with the process of recognition, evaluation and accreditation of the proper occupational skills; the actions of evaluation and improvement of the standards of the system itself, and also the widespread of information and vocational guidance. The system first aims at organising the different occupational qualifications that exist nowadays in Spain, the formative structures, and the procedure for the recognition of vocational training, in order to promote the professional and social development of people and to cover the needs of the production system. In this way, the Catalogue fulfils its aims of allowing the integration of vocational training offers, to satisfy the requirements of the production system, to foster lifelong training as well as to implement the transparency and the unity of the labour market and the free circulation of workers.