Why Education in Spain Needs Digital Infrastructure

The scale of the problem

Every year, hundreds of thousands of vocational education students in Spain complete the Formación en Centros de Trabajo (FCT) — a mandatory workplace training module where students gain real experience at partner companies. It’s one of the most important steps in their professional development.

But here’s the challenge: this process involves a complex coordination between educational institutions, companies, and public administrations across Spain’s 17 Autonomous Communities — each with its own regulations, document templates, and in some cases, co-official languages. The FCT cycle spans 13 phases, from the creation of institutional agreements and student-company matching to daily attendance tracking, evaluation, and the generation of official documents (Annexes I–VII).

Paper, spreadsheets, and email chains

Currently, most of this management is still manual. Coordinators fill out paper forms, exchange documents via email, track attendance in spreadsheets, and print, sign, and physically archive everything. The result is a slow, error-prone process with no traceability.

FCT coordinators lose hundreds of hours per academic year managing agreements, assigning students, filling out annexes, controlling attendance, and generating certificates — all by hand. When documentation is incomplete, institutions face compliance risks. When communication breaks down between schools and companies, students lose training opportunities.

It’s not just FCT

The scope goes beyond traditional FCT. Spain’s vocational education system supports 14 different program types — including FP Dual (General and Intensive, regulated by RD 659/2023), ERASMUS+ mobility, university placements, and professional certifications. Each program has its own rules, documentation requirements, and timelines. Managing all of this with the same fragmented tools is unsustainable.

Building the solution

That’s why I founded MiFCT — a platform that digitalizes the complete FCT management cycle. MiFCT replaces paper-based workflows with a unified system where educational institutions manage placements, companies coordinate with schools, public administrations audit compliance, and students track their daily progress.

The platform handles the full cycle in 13 phases: agreements, prior documentation, exemptions, intelligent student-company matching, placement activation, daily check-in/check-out, incident management, evaluation, automatic document generation, certification, communication, and alumni tracking.

It works natively across all 17 Autonomous Communities, respecting each region’s specific document templates, regulatory requirements, and co-official languages.

Looking ahead

Spain’s vocational education system is one of the largest in Europe, with 26 professional families, 12 educational levels, and a growing emphasis on FP Dual. The opportunity to improve these workflows through thoughtful digitalization is enormous — and it starts with replacing the paper, the spreadsheets, and the email chains with infrastructure that these critical processes deserve.