The Ultimate Guide to FUNDAE Funding for Language Businesses in Spain

If you're planning to provide language training to businesses in Spain, understanding FUNDAE is crucial. This government agency distributes funds to companies for employee training. Languages fall within their umbrella. 

Once registered, your school can use FUNDAE’s online platform to enrol courses in their system. When lessons finish, it issues a certificate, which clients can use towards their social security payments.

Imagine a fifty-hour online module called “English for the Airline Industry” priced at €2000 in total. Once your physical or online school has found the students, you can register the client company on the system and input the course details. When lessons are over, you verify student attendance, exam results and other aspects. 

If everything is fine, your school approves the course and FUNDAE issues a certificate, which can be for the full cost or less, depending on some circumstances. The company deducts this amount from their social security dues.

WHICH COMPANIES CAN APPLY FOR FUNDING?

All Spanish companies are eligible, provided they have no outstanding debt with the tax office or social security system.

WHAT TYPE OF TRAINING WILL FUNDAE FUND?

Any training related to business is eligible. Languages fit here, as long as they are geared towards company needs. Commercial Portuguese, German for meetings, even the “English for the Airline Industry” module mentioned above. 

WHAT TYPE OF COURSES ARE ACCEPTED?

FUNDAE subsidises online courses, face-to-face classes and what they call “virtual classroom”, which are lessons through video conference or an online virtual classroom. It also allows blended training. 

WHAT REQUIREMENTS MUST COURSES MEET?

Here it gets more complicated, as requisites change depending on whether lessons are online with a platform, face-to-face, through a virtual classroom or blended.  

In general, they demand 75% attendance for classes with a teacher and 75% completion rates for platform courses. Tutors must have a teaching degree. Material should be handed out and signed for. Class cancellations are not accepted. Face-to-face lessons can’t be moved from one site to another. Tutors can’t be changed. Students must pass tests and fill a survey. 

WHAT REQUIREMENTS MUST COMPANIES MEET?

Here you have the most important: training must be free for workers; invoices need to follow a specific format plus be posted to a designated account; and students should be actual employees—which excludes trainees and self-employed collaborators.

WHAT REQUIREMENTS MUST SCHOOLS MEET?

We have to differentiate between two options. If your academy teaches businesses that do their own FUNDAE paperwork, there are no special conditions apart from the standard legal requirements for any school. This situation is common with large companies, who often have their own subsidy management systems.

Now, if you want to teach firms and do the paperwork for them, you must not only register at the Spanish Ministry of Labour but at FUNDAE as well. This process can be complex, because conditions change depending on the region where your company is based and on whether you only plan to organise courses for your school or would like to do them for others as well. 

You can visit www.fundae.es for more information, but consulting an expert or taking a specialised course would be recommended.

HOW DOES THE MONEY FLOW?

FUNDAE’s resources mostly come from the social security dues companies pay. They receive the funds, distribute them and hand them back to the firms that conduct training. They call this money “credit” and it’s a fixed amount for every company. It starts at €420 for smaller concerns and goes into the hundred thousand for larger ones.  Businesses can spend up to the credit they are assigned every year. 

Under current FUNDAE guidelines, companies can receive subsidies of up to €13 per hour for each student participating in in-person or synchronous online sessions (i.e., virtual classrooms or telephone-based instruction). For asynchronous online training programs, the subsidy is up to €7.5 per hour per student. 

For example, let’s take the fifty-hour online course we mentioned before. If we have five students who have finished and met all requirements, we’ll multiply 5*7.5*50 to get a total of €1875. As the programme costs €2,000, the company will be refunded for all the outlay except for €125—which will be the real expense for your client.

The way the money flows? Your school issues an invoice. The company pays you the full amount. Once the course has finished and the paperwork is done, the client gets refunded through a deduction on their social security payments. 

FUNDAE ODD BITS

• Companies must sign a contract authorising your academy to manage their FUNDAE account. 
• The credit for larger companies lapses after one year so what’s not used gets lost. 
• Contents, objectives, hours, times, dates and teachers have to be uploaded before classes start. 
• Course details cannot be changed once lessons have begun.
• There are inspections and fines so accuracy when filing information is essential. 
• Documents must be retained for five years and be readily available for inspectors. 
• Schools are liable for errors and managers for fraud. 
• Smaller companies can receive up to one hundred percent in funding but larger ones are allowed a lower percentage. 
• Students and teachers can be contacted at any time and asked about their lessons. 

IS IT WORTH THE HASSLE?

This depends on your goals and business setup. However, many companies in Spain won’t enroll in courses unless they’re covered by FUNDAE. It makes sense. They have funds assigned which, if unused, go wasted. 

Our school, www.englishforbusiness.es has been offering funded programmes for years. We have a dedicated department, and have successfully taught thousands of courses to hundreds of companies—effectively saving them several million euros.