Question 10237 — professional training and apprenticeship

Summary

Mr. Édouard Bénard questions the Minister of Labor, Health, Solidarity, Families, Autonomy and Disabled People on the alarming situation of the Association for Adult Vocational Training (AFPA). Created as an association in 1949, AFPA plays a major role in the qualification of workers, the professional integration of job seekers, the retraining of employees as well as in supporting those furthest from employment. In 2024, 93,000 people will have been trained by AFPA, including 50,000 job seekers. AFPA currently provides 900 training courses within a network of more than 120 centers spread across the national territory. From 2009, the AFPA was faced with a series of shocks: the unprepared transfer of public training orders to the regions and changes in the modalities of purchasing and competition in all its markets and the change in the method of prescription with the departure of occupational psychologists at Pôle Emploi. AFPA was quickly faced with a financial crisis which led the management of the training organization to change its economic model and its organization from 2012, then to a change of status in 2017 to that of a public establishment of an industrial and commercial nature. (EPIC). The AFPA workforce thus increased from 11,000 employees in 1995 to 6,500 agents in 2023. According to a study carried out in 2004 by the Koreis firm, which relied on a rigorous methodology and public data, namely, surveys by the Ministry of Labor on the future of trainees and DARES studies on employment trajectories (PIC evaluation study), the training provided by AFPA obtains results superior to the sector average and generate positive economic benefits that far exceed their costs. The opening of the adult training market to competition in 2009, which resulted in the loss of certain markets allocated by the regions, was also accompanied by an erosion of public resources allocated to the AFPA. In six years, the AFPA has lost 1.2 billion euros while it is faced with a urgent need to renovate its training sites estimated at 840 million euros. The creation of the personal training account (CPF) which diverts part of the training funding towards private organizations, often of low quality, as attested by the Court of Auditors in its report on the professional training of employees of June 2023, has accentuated the financial difficulties of the AFPA. Also, several shots of layoffs were implemented, including a massive one in 2019, which led to the closure of several sites as well as the elimination of 1,500 jobs. While the context is already worrying, a confidential note from the budget department at Bercy, made public by the newspaper l'Humanité in June 2025, reports a proposal for the gradual liquidation of the AFPA, making it possible to eliminate the annual subsidy of 210 million euros. paid by the State to EPIC while paving the way for a sale of its real estate assets. This project would involve the elimination of thousands of jobs and the disappearance of a strategic local public tool, disregarding the social and economic needs of the country. The union organizations of AFPA employees are demanding an immediate moratorium on center closures and job cuts, a sustainable financing plan and full recognition of their public service mission. Vocational training cannot be left solely to market mechanisms like the CPF. Going against this logic, sustainable and structural funding must be ensured for the AFPA to enable it to deploy a real public service of lifelong training. Also, he asks him if the Government intends to guarantee the sustainability of AFPA as an operator essential public by renouncing any plan to liquidate or privatize EPIC. In this regard, he also asks whether the Government intends to put an end to the dependence of the AFPA on the CPF by ensuring structural and sufficient direct funding which would allow it to plan over several years while preserving the jobs, tools and territorial coverage of the EPIC.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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