The demand for professional accreditation —the system that allows officially certifying the abilities and knowledge acquired through work experience or non-formal training— has increased in the Canary Islands more than 104% in the first five months of 2025.
In Lanzarote more than 2,000 people have benefited from the City Council program developed in collaboration with Asolan of 'Accredit your Experience'.
At the level of the Canary Islands, between January and May of this year, a total of 3,451 applications have been received, compared to 1,688 in the same period last year, only 42 less than in all of 2024.
In the last two years, the number of available professional qualifications has increased, going from the 72 existing in 2023 to the 128 of today, with the incorporation of key sectors such as Administration and Management, Commerce and Marketing, Sociocultural Services or Transportation.
The Ministry of Education, Vocational Training, Physical Activity and Sports of the Government of the Canary Islands, directed by Poli Suárez, is responsible for managing the procedure for accreditation of competences through the General Directorate of Professional Qualifications.
In the words of its head, Alfredo Espinosa, the improvements implemented in the system and its promotion are “the demonstration of the Ministry's commitment to promote the employability and continuous training of the population.”
The accreditation procedure allows capitalizing on the accumulated professional experience of people who, due to various circumstances, have not completed their studies. It involves identifying work experience with competence standards, which are certified by the administration and which serve to obtain a professional certificate or even to validate subjects of training cycles.
A permanent call
Regarding the procedure for accreditation of professional competences, “the Ministry has introduced a series of improvements in the call, which remains open permanently, in order to facilitate access for all interested persons”, explained Alfredo Espinosa.
As support to the system, and to respond to the growing demand for accreditation, the Ministry has also established “a model of permanent recruitment of advisors and evaluators of competence standards that currently has 1,700 professionals” —the vast majority, teachers from the different branches and families of public Vocational Training centers—, when until 2023 the figure was 319.
In addition, an annual strategic plan has been designed, in coordination with the business confederations of the provinces of Las Palmas and Santa Cruz de Tenerife and with the majority trade union organizations, to define the lines of action and promote the figure among companies and workers, actively involving these social agents in the dissemination of the procedure.
The design, development and implementation of online guidance tools; the consolidation of public vocational training centers for the development of the procedure or the design of a coordination forum with the administrative units in charge of the procedure for accreditation of professional competences in other autonomous communities are, among others, lines of action in which we have also been working.
Regarding the importance of channeling the process through the Vocational Training centers and the education centers for adults, we work continuously in coordination with other areas of the Ministry to ensure that all of them are in a position to attend the registrations in the procedure electronically or, where appropriate, provide detailed information and assistance on how to proceed.
