Abstract:

One of the fundamental principles which includes the Organic Law 2/2006 of 3 May of Education (BOE, 05/04/2006) is to enable all citizens to achieve the maximum development of all its capabilities, individual and social, intellectual, cultural and emotional, for which they need to receive a quality education adapted to their particular characteristics.
At the same time it must ensure genuine equality of opportunity, providing the necessary support to students who require it and to the students that are out of school. Definitively, it is a question of improving the educational level of the whole student body, harmonizing the quality of education with the equity of his distribution, to obtain of this form an educational system more flexible that it attends to the particular needs of each one of the students.
In this context, the current educational system tries to give response to these needs through different measures of attention to the diversity, for instance the Programme of Initial Professional Qualification (PCPI), regulated by the Order of May 13, 2008 by which there are regulated the Programme of Initial Professional Qualification in the Autonomous Region of Galicia (DOG, 23/05/2008).
These programmes, which constitute one of the changes introduced by the LOE in the Secondary Obligatory Education, try to avoid the school early abandon, to open expectations of training and later qualification and to facilitate the access to work, and are destined for the student body over sixteen years who has not obtained the Graduate's title in Secondary Obligatory Education.
The PCPI begin to be implemented in the academic course 2008-2009, according to the article 12 of the Royal decree 806/2006, of June 30, by which it is established the timetable of application of the new arrangement of the educational system (BOE, 14/07/2006), and they replace the Programmes of Social Guarantee, regulated by the Organic Law 1/1990, of October 3, of general arrangement of the educational system (BOE, 04/10/1990).
The offer of this type of programmes can adopt diverse modalities, in which they can inform the educational centres, the local corporations, the professional associations, the not governmental organizations and other managerial and union entities, under the coordination and authorization of the Educational Administration.
The intention with this work is carry out an analysis of the Programme of Initial Professional Qualification in the Autonomous Region of Galicia, examining their main characteristics and comparing them with relation to the former Programmes of Social Guarantee.

Keywords:

Secondary Obligatory Education, Programme of Initial Professional Qualification, attention to the diversity.