Improving skills would drive job creation and growth in Spain | WPN World People News

Spain should boost support for the unemployed and expand vocational education and training as part of a series of reforms to promote better skills utilisation and drive job creation and growth, according to a new OECD report.

Getting Skills Right: Spain says that skills demands are more polarised in Spain than in many other OECD countries, with a high share of jobs requiring either very low or very high levels of education.

“The policies implemented in recent years are bearing fruit, highlighting the modernization of vocational training and the new model of dual work-based training. Their impact on the decline of early school leaving has been remarkable,” said Montserrat Gomendio, OECD Deputy Director for Education and Skills, launching the report in Madrid. “Improving people’s skills to face the challenges of digitalization and globalization is essential, especially for young people not in education, employment or training, the long-term unemployed and the adults with low skills. It's also key to address the transition from the traditional educational model to lifelong learning, develop new models of training for adults, and promote a more efficient use of skills at work."

The government and other stakeholders have taken a series of initiatives to bring skill supply in line with demand, including a national job portal, policies to help the long-term unemployed, an updated dual model of work-based training, and reforms to the professional training system.

But further challenges remain. Adults in Spain have one of the poorest performances on basic numeracy and reading skills compared to all other OECD countries. Even tertiary graduates, who perform higher than the national average, still have the lowest average literacy scores of any of their peers in OECD countries.

More could be done to match skill supply to demand. Focusing publicly-subsidised training for the employed and unemployed to skills and qualifications which are in high demand would help, as well as expanding opportunities for adults to engage in lifelong learning.

Despite high and persistent unemployment, Spain spends relatively little on training and job search assistance for the unemployed compared with other OECD countries. Public employment service workers in Spain are overburdened, with 721 jobseekers assigned to every public employment service worker, compared to fewer than 50 per worker in Germany. The government should follow through with plans to introduce a statistical profiling tool to improve the targeting of public employment services, as many other OECD countries have done.

The use of hiring subsidies should be reduced, which would free up resources for subsidies to cover necessary training provision to help overcome skill deficiencies among jobseekers, making them more employable over the longer-term. The use of the new training vouchers for the unemployed should be targeted to accredited institutions and focused on skills in demand.

Low basic skills among adults hurt their employability and not enough adult learning options are available to assist them. While free basic skills training for adults exists, participation is currently very low. Spain should consider making the offer of basic skills training for adults more flexible in order to encourage higher participation.

To introduce financial incentives for lifelong learning opportunities that are linked to individuals rather than to jobs, Spain should consider tying the Training Account (Cuenta Formación) to a system of vouchers to allow individuals to upskill and retrain as demand for skills changes. More training credits could be provided for those skills and occupations that are in shortage.

Source: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development