Melilla and the Ministry sign an agreement against school dropout

The Autonomous City of Melilla and the Ministry of Education, Vocational Training and Sports have formalized a collaboration agreement for the 2026-2027 academic year aimed at developing educational compensation programs and training for disadvantaged young people and adults. The agreement, approved by the city’s Governing Council on August 3, 2026, and formalized on August 24, has been entered into the Agreement Registry of the Autonomous City under number CON2600231 and is published in BOME number 6411, dated September 4, 2026, with the official reference BOME-A-2026-998.

The agreement is signed by the Minister of Education, Vocational Training and Sports, Milagros Tolón Jaime, and the President of the City of Melilla, Juan José Imbroda Ortiz. It falls within the direct management competence that the State exercises regarding educational matters in Ceuta and Melilla, and is based on Law 7/1985 on the Bases of the Local Regime, Law 40/2015 on the Legal Regime of the Public Sector, and Organic Law 2/2006 on Education, which provides for compensatory actions for those in disadvantaged situations.

Financing and validity

The total financing amount of the agreement amounts to 1,589,013.41 euros, distributed between both administrations:

• The Ministry will transfer 775,346.32 euros to the Department of Education, Youth and Sports.
• The City of Melilla will contribute 813,667.09 euros, of which 471,070.42 euros correspond to 2026 and 342,596.67 euros to 2027.

The agreement will remain in effect until July 31, 2027, with the possibility of extension per school year and up to a maximum of four additional years via addendum.

Action programs

The agreement organizes three main blocks of action:

• An activities program, with plans for the prevention of school absenteeism, socio-educational support, and the improvement of coexistence within centers.
• A training program, which includes literacy and linguistic immersion in Spanish, training impetus toward employability, and support for information technologies.
• A support unit for guidance and monitoring of early school leaving, which will contact young people who left the system without a qualification to offer them ways of reintegration.

Training will be organized in groups of twelve students maximum, with a duration of 520 teaching hours of modular structure, and will include academic modules of up to 120 hours to prepare for access to vocational training cycles, as well as grade A and B competency certificates.

Target groups

The actions are directed at the groups with the highest risk of exclusion in the city:

• Unaccompanied foreign minors and children from the Temporary Stay Center for Immigrants.
• Disadvantaged youth and adults without basic education or initial vocational training.
• Students with late or irregular schooling and lack of proficiency in the Spanish language.

The objective is to reduce the early school leaving rate, which in Melilla is below the state average, and to facilitate the social and labor integration of these groups.

Relevance for Melilla

The agreement represents a coordinated commitment between the State and the city to serve the most vulnerable sectors of the Melilla student population, outside the scope of ordinary schooling. By combining financial resources, multidisciplinary teams, and a specific monitoring unit, the agreement seeks to turn school dropout into an effective reintegration into the educational system and the labor market, a structural challenge for the city.

Source: Official Gazette of the Autonomous City of Melilla (BOME), number 6411, September 4, 2026, pp. 4596-4607 (official reference: BOME-A-2026-998).