Question 16441 — vocational training and apprenticeship

Summary

Mr. Gaëtan Dussausaye questions the Minister Delegate to the Minister of Labor and Solidarity and the Minister of National Education, responsible for vocational education and training and apprenticeship, on the extent of fraud affecting the financing of apprenticeship. Since the reform of September 5, 2018 for the freedom to choose one's professional future, apprenticeship has experienced unprecedented growth, with almost of a million apprentices and several billion euros of public funding mobilized each year. This dynamic has contributed to the development of work-study, but it has also been accompanied by an increase in the risks of excesses and misappropriations. This growth has been particularly marked in higher education. While apprenticeship was historically intended to promote professional integration in technical professions and training at the CAP to BTS level, its development has gradually focused on training at the bachelor's, master's and engineering diploma levels. A significant proportion of apprenticeship contracts now concern students preparing for a bac + 4 or bac + 5 level diploma, for whom the prospects of professional integration were already generally favorable. This development favored the entry massive number of private players in the higher education market, with certain establishments having based their economic model mainly on capturing public funding linked to learning. Several surveys and reports have highlighted abuses consisting of favoring an increase in the number of registrations rather than the educational quality of the training offered, as well as a strong dependence of certain establishments with public aid. In certain cases, apprenticeship appears more as a mechanism for financing higher education courses than as a real tool for progressively acquiring a profession within the company. This growing concentration of public funding on higher education reinforces questions relating to the efficiency of public spending and the capacity of support systems. control to prevent windfall effects, abuse and fraudulent schemes in a rapidly expanding sector. According to a report from the Court of Auditors revealed by the press in June 2026, nearly 10% of expenditure devoted to apprenticeship would be exposed to the risk of fraud, abuse or irregularities, or around 1.5 billion euros per year. The investigations carried out with skills operators (OPCO) would have highlighted evidence of various practices such as the use of false employers, the creation of opportunistic training structures, the production of inaccurate supporting documents or even declarations that do not correspond to the reality of the training funded. These revelations come as the Court of Auditors has been warning for several years about the inadequacy of financial management and control of public spending in the field of vocational training and apprenticeship. In its contribution to the public expenditure review published in 2023, it already noted that the 2018 reform had led to very strong growth in spending, without sufficient attention paid to the quality of this spending or its financial sustainability. The revelation of such a potential level of fraud, which could reach almost a tenth of the credits committed, raises a question important for the good management of public funds, but also for the protection of apprentices and companies which respect the rules and whose image can be damaged by the actions of fraudulent actors. In this context, he asks what new measures the Government intends to implement in order to strengthen prior and a posteriori controls of apprentice training centers, training organizations and employers. and skills operators, in order to prevent misappropriation of public funds and guarantee the effective use of credits for the benefit of apprentices.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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