The main private educational centers offering vocational training courses, such as Ilerna and IFP (Grupo Planeta), have for years kept their teachers under professional agreements that do not align them by category, and enforce worse working conditions. According to the newspaper EL PAÍS y SER Catalunya, the largest player in the sector, the company Ilerna – which focuses on 66% of distance learning students in Catalonia – last September began the process of regulation – starting with a private educational consultancy agreement – bringing numerous complaints to the Labor Inspectorate by the UGT union and several foreigners. The same path is to be taken by the IFP, but in this case with its professorship in field centers – with workshop and missionary agreements – behind the CGT prison and workers’ organisation. Other large companies in this sector, such as Ceac (absorbed by Planeta) or Medac have the appropriate agreement.
The private family planning sector has grown like foam in the past decade, driven by interest in this type of study, but also by a deficit in public spaces. The distance learning method led the most vibrant growth, amassing 66,270 places in the 2022-2023 cycle, according to data from the Ministry of Education, which is three times more than the number of private in-person classes. Catalonia is the undisputed leader community in the field of private remote family planning, and the majority of the business is concentrated in Ilerna, the company based in Lleida, with about 44,000 students in the same course, much higher than its closest competitors, such as IPF del Grupo Planeta (5,000 students) or the Center for Catalan Studies (2,300). The problem is that this explosion in the sector is happening without comprehensive oversight on the part of the Ministry: in 2021 it approved a decree to regulate it, which was suspended at the request of Ilerna, although since a year ago Education has been working on a new regulation, restoring the spirit of the first regulation, which will soon eliminate public information.
According to an investigation by the newspaper EL PAÍS y SER Catalunya, students from private family planning centers denounced various shortcomings, such as the lack of places to implement the practices or the poor preparation of some teachers. Now there are teachers in these centers who deny the poor working conditions, starting with the lack of insufficient agreement between them. In the case of Elrana, the branch teachers connected They have always worked in the marketing and consulting sector, a situation that was reported to the Labor Inspectorate, on the one hand, by the General Confederation of Workers in April and, on the other hand, by a group of seven additional workers in July.
This course, transmitted by Elrna. At the beginning of September, it surprisingly announced to workers a change in the agreement for non-concert-regulated teaching centres. “Before the company stage, they sent us the new contract and forced us to sign it within 24 hours, telling us that we had all signed it or we could not implement it,” explains one of the many teachers consulted, who preferred to remain anonymous. Since Ellerna, they explained in a book that the change in the agreement was made “in the presence of the request” of the workers, “to regularize the situation of the factory according to the agreement that corresponds to the activity of the teachers.” The company stated that this was a “pending matter” and that it was now “due to a corporate reorganization.” In 2024, Elrna was acquired by the Swiss investment fund Jacobs Holding.
The change includes a few changes in terms of salary, as Elrna paid supplements to equalize her salary with her teaching salary, but only in terms of annual hours: from 1,780 to 1,376. Fewer hours, but “same workload,” she assures teachers, which means, admittedly, lower quality of attention. “We have to correct the same volume, but in less time, so it happens in a more superficial way,” he adds. In this context, the teachers consulted denounced that each of them could be responsible for up to 2,000 students: “Imagine the quality of teaching. There is no personal education.”
This is not helpful in a context where exams, which are done in person, are held in large spaces such as hotels, where students from all over Spain, as well as teachers, must travel to take the exams. Teachers acknowledge their limitations in monitoring students. “During the exam, the teacher solves doubts and quizzes Messages… Sometimes you look at exams for other assignments, so if the student has a question, you have to write to your teacher via chat and respond to him at any time, so you will be on your phone permanently.”
Teachers claim they feel unprotected because there is no cohesion among employees on the current company committee within the union sections. “There are many difficulties because the company does not facilitate things for the election of the company committee. The workers also want to be fired out of fear,” explains Santi Balcells, head of public services at UGT in Lleida.
In the case of the IFP, the FP training center set up by Grupo Planeta, teacher training connected They are independent, and the problem centers on face-to-face teaching, with workshop agreements and correspondence, as the CGT union section has condemned. A union representative explains: “Several workers went to management to complain about the favorable agreement and the final session was set in the union department. When the company saw that the distress and organization of workers was increasing, it began to negotiate.” The planet did not want to make statements.
These same sources confirm that there is an agreement so that the company will, from now on until the end of the year, gradually transfer all workers under the appropriate agreement, in total, about 82 teachers from the Barcelona and Hospitalit centers, according to union figures. He added: “For 10 years, I did not comply with the regulations and lost half a million euros in salaries.” However, they admit that they did not file a complaint with the Labor Inspectorate.
However, this type of situation may go unnoticed by inspectors. Educational inspection sources admit that when they visit the centers, they check that the teachers hold the required title, but on the condition that the appropriate agreement is applied to them. For its part, Trabago confirms that the inspection body does not consider penalizing a company for not implementing the appropriate agreement, but it can only alert it when it harms the working conditions of workers.
Online Teachers Association
The rapid growth of the sector also led to the discovery of the organization of the role of teachers connectedwhich presents its most specific peculiarities of the private teaching convention. With the aim of defending this association, this summer the Anproe Association was founded, created by several Ilerna exits, which has drawn up a guide so that teachers can understand their rights, which in many cases, remote work and the distance between teachers assume the presence of a wall at the time of building labor relations or promoting the creation of union sections. They also met with the Ministry of Education to demand joint regulations. “We have students from many places and we adhere to the regulations of each community,” explains Pablo Díaz, the entity’s president. “We demand a minimum state regulation detailing the proportions of students or the conditions for holding exams.”
About The Author
