Context and international dimension.

Formal VET provision is in most countries delivered by schools or training centers that are either part of the public system or accredited or allowed by the authorities that are responsible of the offer, funding or official accreditation of the qualifications achieved.

Non-formal VET provision is often delivered by organizations and institutions that are not part of that system. That is the case in Spain, where municipalities and non-governmental organizations are involved in training provision without that being their main purpose or mission. Markowitsch, Scharle, & Csillag (2024) have illustrated their relevance in European policies, both Vocational Education and Training and Active Employment policies, as Crespo & Serrano (2013), Heidenreich & Graziano (2014) and Heidenreich & Rice (2016) have also explained. VET is part of the European Employment strategy, even if it has been subject to criticism (Sanz de Miguel, 2016). 

Molpeceres et al. (2024a, 2024b) have addressed the role of VET and adult education in employment policies and discussing the contribution of social institutions that, even if they have other interests than VET, engage in relevant ways in the provision of VET and qualifications.

Research question.

The paper is embedded in four-year funded research by the Spanish Government (PID2021-125912OB-I00) that covers several issues. The research question addressed in this contribution attempts to find out what the commonalities and differences in the understanding of VET are in these non-formal VET providers. The question will be answered by looking at three different dimensions that we have explored empirically: 

a)        The practice, tasks and procedures that these organizations conduct with individuals as well as with stakeholders and companies in their context.

b)        The knowledge that these organizations generate in relation to VET, careers guidance, intermediation and professional practice; and 

c)        The mission of these organizations and the weight of VET in that mission.

Theoretical framework.

NGOs in general find themselves at the crossroads of power tensions and forces of the public administration, the market and the community and, as Dubet (2006), within a context where the public administration is losing social legitimation, within the larger changes explained by Castel (2003) that affect the social contract centered around the role of employment as the main inclusion mechanism.

The increasing precarization process signaled by Standing (2011) has an impact upon vocational education and training and activation policies, that has been analyzed by Arqueros-Fernández (2022) or Martínez-Morales, Mezzadra and Molpeceres (2024): These are precisely the policy frameworks and the practices in which NGOs involve themselves when training, skilling, assisting and preparing  vulnerable people in their access to employment and the labor market, once these people are getting back into track after leaving processes of severe exclusion or marginalization.

Given that the purpose of NGOs is rather social inclusion than skilling for the sake of training in itself, they need to find legitimation for their actions before their own members, the people they serve, the institutions that give funding to make these practices possible and the stakeholders in the context in which they find themselves. These legitimation processes have been recently studied from an educational perspective (Imdorf and Leeman, 2023) and from the perspective of the employment policies (Semenovicz, 2023) and transitions into the labor market (Ye, 2024). We rely upon these sources in order to analyze our empirical data.

Our research has been conducted with twelve Third Sector Organizations that offer non-formal VET in one of the seventeen Spanish regions. The selection of these organizations was done out of a sample of 60, that the research team had to develop itself as there is no official registry of these organizations. We constructed our database employing several sources of information: a) the list of officially awarded funded by the Department of Labor; b) the list of institutions that were members of the Incorpora network in the region, which has been developed by the major private funding institution in the whole country; c) the list of members of the EAPN in the region and the list of members of the members of the Platform of the Third Sector. We searched to maximize variety of institutions, so we considered the following criteria to select our twelve organizations: a) organizations based in each of the provinces of the region; b) state-wide, regional and local scope of their action; c) type of organization (association or foundation); d) civil vs religious origin; e) date of establishment; f) variety of VET provision; and g) serving people with or without disability. Furthermore, we considered other criteria like quality management system in the organization, networks in which it takes part, relying upon voluntary work; and profile of the learners. We have conducted in-depth interviews, with all the safeguards of anonymity, confidentiality and rights to reverse their views. Interviews lasted between 2 and a half and 4 and a half hours each, with staff working in those organizations; at least 3 members of the staff and a maximum of five, reaching out for people in different positions: management, training, employment and intermediation services. We transcribed the interviews, arranged and anonymized them and we coded them using MaxQDA 24. We used two range of codes, one to address the individual dimensions of the interviews and the second to address the organizational dimensions. In this paper, we rely upon the second set of codes. We also conducted three discussion groups on three topics: management of the provision, vocational training and access into the labor market and the generational shift within the organizations. In this paper, we refer to the first and second groups.

We are still analyzing data from the interviews and the discussion groups are being conducted in February 2026; therefore, we cannot yet present conclusions here. Our hypotheses go in the following directions. a) Some organizations attempt to satisfy both the demands of the population they serve and the companies, while others opt to focus upon one of those two groups. Their practice is shaped by those choices. b) There is a variety of practices that depends on the specialization of the organizations: Basic vocational training with an exploratory aim, mixed with the attempt to motivate and activate trainees; instrumental training through workshops to conduct an interview for a job, preparing one’s CV or handling sources in the process of search for a job; intermediation practices with companies including work placements. c) Most of these organizations count on professional work (and therefore, despite being NGOs, no voluntary work is involved in VET nor active employment policies). But professionals have different backgrounds and there is no proper community of practice of reference. d) The knowledge produced by professionals in these organizations is mostly idiosyncratic and remains the domain of the professional rather than the organization. Anyhow, we expect to find organizations that develop their own materials and procedures, therefore consolidating that knowledge. e) The VET practice of these organizations is subject to subsidiarity: the end-users of their services cannot pay for them and therefore the NGOs need the support of funding sources that shape their ways and constrain their outreach and potential. f) The loss of the worth of employment is impacting the organizations and the professionals, that try to make sense of their own practice even if they are aware of the limitations of VET and active employment policies for the kind of population that they work for.

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