What is dual vocational training (FP dual), and does it work in Spain?

Dual vocational training, FP dual in Spain, is vocational education in which a college and a company train the student together. Spain's 2022 VET law, Organic Law 3/2022, defines it as training carried out in co-responsibility between the two, and it turned the old dual pilot into the standard model: every FP course must now include a phase in a company of at least 25% of its total length, with an exception down to 20% for some basic-level courses. It answers one of the problems Democracia 21's launch speech raised, practical experience at every stage of education.

The two regimes

The law sets two regimes.

In the general regime (régimen general), the company phase lasts between 25% and 35% of the course, and the company takes part in up to 20% of the learning outcomes. There is no training contract and no employment relationship with the company. In practice it works like a long, structured placement.

In the intensive regime (régimen intensivo), the company phase is longer than 35% of the course, and the company takes part in more than 30% of the learning outcomes or modules. The student signs a training contract, which the law treats as an employment contract, so they are paid and covered as workers.

Spain arrives at this from a long way back. Dual training was introduced in 2012, following a recommendation from the European Commission, as the IZA study described below recalls. In its early years it was small: in 2015–16 dual students were 5.1% of higher-level VET students in Madrid. Today FP as a whole is growing fast. According to the education ministry, enrolment reached 1,211,062 students in 2025–26, a record, 2.5% more than the year before, and specialisation courses had almost 10,000 students.

Does it work in Spain?

The most careful Spanish evidence comes from Madrid. Samuel Bentolila, Antonio Cabrales and Marcel Jansen studied the first three dual cohorts, who graduated between 2014 and 2016, and compared them with school-based graduates in the same fields, using the distance from each student's secondary school to the colleges offering dual training to separate the effect of the programme from who chooses it. Their IZA paper finds sizeable gains in employment and earnings: dual graduates worked 25% more days and earned 42% more in their first two years. Two-thirds of the gap appears in the first twelve months, and the two groups converge over time. They found no significant effect on job quality.

The ministry's own insertion statistics, as reported by Aprendemas, point the same way. One year after finishing, 51.1% of all higher-level FP graduates were affiliated to Social Security, rising to 63.5% after three years. For dual higher-level graduates the figures were 63.2% and 72.1%. At intermediate level, dual graduates went from 40.1% to 64.6%, against 36.2% to 44.9% for all intermediate graduates. These are raw comparisons, so part of the gap reflects who chooses dual training, which is exactly why the Madrid study matters.

Firms can gain too. BIBB, Germany's federal VET institute, summarises Swiss research showing that host firms there spent CHF 5.3 billion training apprentices and got CHF 5.8 billion of productive work back, a net gain of about CHF 0.5 billion. BIBB warns that the result is unlikely to transfer directly to other countries, since it depends on Swiss wages and training rules.

The context is why this matters so much in Spain. Eurostat puts Spain's unemployment rate for under-25s at 22.7% in August 2026, against 15.4% in the EU, 8.8% in the Netherlands and 7.4% in Germany, two countries with strong apprenticeship systems.

A radical-centre reading

The left is right that a student who spends months working in a company should be treated as a worker, with a contract, pay and rights. That is what the intensive regime does, and it should become the normal route in sectors where firms can take students for long periods. The left is also right that a student in a small town with few firms should not lose out.

The market-liberal tradition is right that firms train when training pays off for them. They need a real say in what apprentices learn and much less paperwork, and the Swiss numbers show that a well-designed system can leave host firms better off.

The idea that fits neither camp comes from Raghuram Rajan, who argues that the local community is the third pillar beside the market and the state. Many Spanish firms are small, and a ten-person workshop cannot run a tutoring programme alone. Local training alliances can: the town hall, the chamber of commerce, the FP colleges and groups of small firms share tutors, rotate students between firms and handle the paperwork once for everyone. The state pays for the coordinators, firms provide the work, and the community holds it together. This is how Giddens's social investment reaches a workshop in a small town.

Then measure it. Spain already links FP graduates to Social Security records for its insertion statistics. Publish those results for every cycle and every college, by regime, so families can see where dual training leads and the regions can learn which alliances work.