PROGRAMMES OF INITIAL PROFESSIONAL QUALIFICATION IN THE SPANISH EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

One of the fundamental principles of the Organic Law 2/2006, 3th May, of Education (LOE) (BOE, 04/05/2006) [1] is to achieve that all citizens reach the maximum possible development of their abilities, individual and social, intellectual, cultural and emotional. For that, they need to receive a quality education and adapted to their particular characteristics. In this sense, the current educational system try to cover these needs through different measures of attention to diversity, like Programmes of Initial Professional Qualification (PCPI), one of the innovations undertook by the LOE. These programmes began to be introduced in the year 2007-2008 in the Autonomous Regions of Canarias, Castilla La Mancha and Ceuta and Melilla, extending to the rest of the state in 2008-2009, in accordance with the article 12 of the Royal Decree 806/2006 which establishes the application calendar of the educational system regulation (BOE, 14/07/2006) [2]. So, Programmes of Social Guarantee (PGS), which were regulated by the Organic Law 1/1990, 3th October, of general ordination of the educational system (LOGSE) (BOE, 04/10/1990) [3], stop being valid. The aim of PCPI is to prevent the school abandonment before the ending of the compulsory education and open new expectations of training and qualifications to students who have social, working and educational disadvantages. In fact, with these programmes they can achieve, in addition to basic competences to continue studies in the different educational levels, professional competences with a qualification of level 1 of the current structure of the National Catalogue of Professional Qualifications (CNCP) created by the Organic Law 5/2002, 19th June, of Qualifications and Professional Training (LOCFP) (BOE, 20/06/2002) [4]. The introduction of PCPI involves the development of an alternative that makes flexible the educational system, opening new ways to obtain a minimum qualification. This alternative has a professional vocation, promoting the relation between students and labour market and facilitating the labour insertion in a professional activity. With this context, the goal of the present work is to analyze Programmes of Initial Professional Qualification in the Spanish educational system through the study of the main characteristic (aim, organization, accreditation ... ) in accordance with the legislation in force, as well as the analysis of the data referred to students enrolled in PCPI in different autonomous regions.