Name of Educational Leave Scheme

Paid Educational leave

• Introduction
• Legal framework
• Objectives
• Types of training
• Training providers
• Target sector(s)
• Target group(s)
• Eligibility criteria
• Stipulations for participants
• Duration of training
• Status of participants
• Application procedure
• Regulation, control and monitoring procedures
• Funding mechanisms
• Payment to persons on leave
• Statistics

The aim of personal training leave is to allow all employees throughout their working lives to follow training courses of their choice, on their own initiative, and on an individual basis, besides those courses which are included in the training plan of the company for which they work.

Such training courses are intended to enable workers to upgrade their qualifications, switch activity or profession, and to become more open to culture, social life, and the exercise of responsibility related to voluntary activity. They are partly or wholly run during working hours. Leave may also be granted to an employee to enable him to study for and sit an exam.

The right to personal training leave depends on permission to take leave being granted by the employer, and on a financial assistance scheme. Should no financial support be forthcoming, the employee may decide to take unpaid personal leave.

Personal training leave is governed by Laws No 90-613 of 12 July 1990, and No 2000-267 of 6 July 2000, codified under Articles L. 931-1 ff. of the Employment Code, and by the national inter-professional agreement of 3.7.91, Article 31-2 as changed by the amendment of 5.7.94, extended respectively on 2 November 1992 and 10 May 1995.

To enable workers to upgrade their qualifications, switch activity or profession, and to become more open to culture and social life, and to sit an exam.

The categories of training involved are as follows: courses to acquire, maintain and perfect knowledge; courses aimed at promotion; adaptation courses; courses to prevent and combat illiteracy.

Training courses followed under personal training leave may or may not, therefore, be of a vocational nature. Where training is of a vocational nature, it may or may not prepare the individual for a profession within the vocational branch to which the employee's company belongs.

Correspondence courses
Correspondence courses fall within the scope of continuing training since they involve exercises corrected by a training organisation, and the latter regularly convenes groups of trainees.

When these groups meet during working hours, in order to take part the employee may be granted leave of absence within the framework of personal training leave.

Personal training leave allows employees to follow training courses which take place wholly or partly within working hours.
This definition rules out using personal training leave for courses which take place entirely outside working hours.

Training involving a practical placement within a company
Practical placements in companies during the training programme can be undertaken within the framework of personal training leave.

Training abroad

Training within the European Union
When the training course is run in a country of the European Union (EU), personal training leave may be funded according to the funding rules and provisions defined by the FONGECIFs (Fonds pour la gestion du congé individuel de formation - Funds for Administering Individual Training Leave), and related to priority setting.

Training outside the European Union
Funding of personal training leave in a country which is not a member of the European Union (EU) must only be granted for training courses which clearly cannot be organised in France or another EEU member state. Under no circumstances may the refunding of part or all of the course fees relating to the course followed exceed the level of funding which would have been granted under the rules of the FONGECIFs in question, for a similar training course conducted in an EU member state for a similar audience.

Training Module

A funding application which relates to part of a training course may be accepted, provided that the employee in question produces permission for leave specifically for that part of the course (a module or session, in particular) covered by his application, and on the condition that the application was submitted before he began training in the module or session for which he is requesting funding.

Any public or private training organisation.

Personal training leave is an entitlement granted to all employees in both the private and public sectors.

Any worker bound by an employment contract to an employer, whether public or private.

All employees of companies in the industrial, trade, craft and agricultural sectors, and in associations.

To submit an application for leave, the employee must:

• meet a service requirement of 24 months, whether or not consecutive, as an employee regardless of the nature of the successive contracts, 12 months of which must have been served in the company.
• Respect the given interim period since the last course he followed under personal training leave;
• Find a training organisation and select a course;
• Request leave of absence from his employer for the duration of his training, respecting certain procedural deadlines;
• Apply for financial assistance from the joint body to which he belongs.

1) Calculating length of service
In order to exercise his right to personal training leave, the employee (not of a small-scale company of craftsmen) must be able to prove 24 months of service, whether or not consecutive, as an employee, whatever the nature of the successive contracts, 12 months of which must have been served in the company.

Small companies of craftsmen
In small-scale companies of less than 10 employees, workers must be able to prove length of service of at least 36 months, whether or not consecutive, as an employee, whatever the nature of the successive contracts, 12 months of which must have been served in the company. As far as small-scale companies of more than 10 employees are concerned, the same rules apply to calculating the service requirement as apply to other companies.

In cases of economic redundancy
No service requirement applies to employees newly recruited by a company where they have previously been made redundant on economic grounds, and have not followed any courses between the time of redundancy and that of reemployment.

Length of service as an employee
All the contracts on which the employee has worked are taken into account, whatever the nature of these contracts.

Length of service within the company
This refers to the months of service within the company, not within the specific plant: to calculate length of service a company employee who has changed plant takes account of the total number of months within the actual company, meaning all of its various units. To calculate length of service, all periods are taken into account during which the person has belonged to the company in which he has submitted his application for personal training leave.

2) Frequency
There must be an interim period between two instances of personal training leave applied for by an employee in the same company.

This interim period is not required of an employee who has been sent on a course by his employer and who, at the end of training, applies for personal training leave. The same applies to an employee who has taken a course within the framework of training leave for economic, social, and trade union purposes, or management or youth leadership training.

Moreover, no interim period is required following leave taken in order to sit an exam.

Duration of the interim period
It varies according to the length of the previous training leave. The interim period is defined by a minimum (6 months) and a maximum (6 years). It is calculated starting on the last day of previous training leave, as follows:

Trigger point for the interim period

Part-time training
As far as part-time courses are concerned, the documents do not specify the date as of which the interim period applies (end of previous course, date of employer's response, start of training).

Application of the rule which applies to full-time training to part-time courses (interim period starting on the last day of previous training) would seriously penalise this type of training.

This issue needs to be settled under an agreement reached between the employer and staff representatives.
There are basically two possible solutions:

• to apply the interim period starting on the first day of training;
• to calculate the date on which training would have ended had it been full-time, and apply the interim period as of that fictitious date for the end of training.

Intermittent training
When the training course for which personal leave has been granted is comprised of various different sessions, blocks or modules, or of pre-training and a vocational training course, the interim period only applies once, starting on the last day of the last session, block or module, or the last day of an actual vocational training course as such.

The duration of personal training leave is equal to the length of the course. However, this may not exceed one year (calendar year) if training is full-time, or 1200 hours if it is a part-time course, or if the courses make up a teaching cycle comprising various separate units.

Agreements (branch or company, for example) may on occasion establish a longer period for personal training leave.
The length of leave authorisation applied for by the employee to his employer is equal to the time required to follow the course. However, if training takes place partly outside working hours, leave authorisation is limited to that part of the course which takes place within working time.
Moreover, under his own rules, any employer is entitled to grant permission to take personal training leave for more than one year (or 1200 hours for part-time training).

1) Suspension of the employment contract An open-ended employment contract is not broken during personal training leave. Some of its effects are merely suspended.

Actual working time
Training time is assimilated to actual working time for the purposes of calculating paid leave and rights relating to length of service. Consequently, time spent on training leave by the employee is taken into account when determining his rights to paid leave vis à vis his company. This rule applies regardless of the length of leave, however it is paid, and whether or not it is paid by the employer.

The same applies as concerns the rights to which the employee is entitled as a result of his service in the company: thus exceptional 13th month premia, output, holidays, results and bonuses may be linked to length of service.

Consequently, these premia are to be paid by the company whatever the duration of training, whether the employee is remunerated by the employer during leave or not, and whatever form the remuneration takes.

Paid leave
The duration of personal training leave may not be deducted from the duration of annual paid leave.

Official functions
An employee on training leave retains the right to act as a staff representative or trade union delegate. He also retains the right to elect and to be elected.
Although an employee on personal training leave retains his rights as a voter, he may, on the contrary, only be elected if he is effectively able to carry out his duties (for example part-time personal training leave or a course being run close to the company).

Attendance requirement
During training leave the employee in question must regularly attend the course for which leave authorisation was granted. For this reason he must regularly prove his attendance on the course by providing a certificate of attendance at the end of each month and when he goes back to work.

Authorised absence
The employee may absent himself from the course for any valid reason, having duly informed the Works Council or Committee or, failing that, the staff representatives: these reasons are the same as those which usually lead to the suspension of an employment contract: illness, maternity, or occupational accident.

He may also interrupt his leave if he realises that through mistaken guidance he is actually on a course which is unsuitable for his level of knowledge.

Redundancy
An employee on personal training leave does not have any particular employment guarantees. During his absence he may indeed be made redundant on economic or personal grounds, although under no circumstances on grounds related to his training leave.

2) Retaining social protection
During personal training leave, the employee continues to be covered for all the risks under the statutory scheme (health, maternity, invalidity, death, family duties, occupational accident, old age insurance) and the supplementary scheme (mutual benefit associations, additional pensions). He therefore continues to be affiliated to the system to which he belonged before training. There are no affiliation formalities to be completed.

3) At the end of training
Return to the company
Personal training leave depends on leave corresponding to the duration of training being authorised by the employer. Consequently, at the end of training the employee returns to a job in the company which corresponds to the level of qualification and remuneration set out in his employment contract. No essential part of his contract may be amended. However, there are no guarantees that the employee will return to exactly the same position or the same job.

Taking account of the results of training
If the relevant collective or company agreement contains rules on taking account of qualifications acquired by employees as a result of training courses, these apply to employees having taken personal training leave.

1) Leave authorisation
The employee submits a written application for leave to his employer, which must clearly indicate:

• the date on which training starts;
• the title of the course;
• the duration of the course;
• the name of the training organisation in charge.

Time limits for submission of the application
The employee must submit his application for training leave to his employer at the latest:

• 120 days before the start of training if it lasts 6 months or more, is provided in one block and is full-time;
• 60 days before the start of training:
  • if the total duration of training is less than 6 months;
  • if it is a part-time course or one taught in several blocks;
  • if the application is for the purpose of sitting or studying for an exam.

The employer's response
The employer must make his response known within a period of 30 days following receipt of the application, and may not revoke authorisation once granted.

The employer may only refuse leave to employees who do not meet the fore-mentioned criteria. Two grounds are foreseen in the texts which would possibly allow him to postpone personal training leave.

Postponement related to the simultaneous absence of staff aims at allowing the employer to limit the number of employees on personal training leave at one time. Postponement for service reasons is intended to allow the employer to delay the departure of an employee (for a maximum of nine months) whose absence is seen as detrimental to the smooth running of the company.

In all other cases, the employer is bound to grant the personal training leave applied for by the employee, for the dates indicated by the latter.

2. Request for funding
Any employee wanting to take personal training leave must contact the collection organisation approved for personal training leave to which he belongs in order to receive funding. The request for funding must be made in accordance with the procedure which applies in each collection body. It is therefore in the interests of the employee to contact the collection body at the earliest possible stage, in order to be sent the dossier he needs to complete to apply for funding.
Funding may cover:

• remuneration
• training costs (registration fees, travel expenses, accommodation)
.

The OPACIF's response
The joint body is not bound by any specific deadline for responding to the application for funding.
In practice, the time involved varies according to the frequency at which the joint committee responsible for examining dossiers meets within each joint personal training leave management body (OPACIF).

Application for funding to the employer
Companies with 10 employees may participate directly in the funding of personal training leave by using continuing vocational training tax contributions.

An employee in a company with 10 employees or more may therefore contact his employer in order to receive either funding additional to that approved by the OPACIF, or total or part funding of personal training leave for which the OPACIF could not meet the cost.

Disputes related to funding

Appeals to the OPACIF
When a request for funding is partly or wholly refused by an accredited joint body for personal training leave (OPACIF, Organisme paritaire agréé pour le Congé individuel de formation) the organisation informs the employee in question of the grounds for the rejection of his application, and the possibility of appeal.
Any appeal should be addressed to the organisation which rejected the application within 2 months of the date on which notification of refusal was sent.

The appeal is examined by a joint appeals body set up within the OPACIF by its board of administration. The Board determines the conditions in which it delegates the power to speak on its behalf on appeals to this body.
The employee is notified of the decision on his appeal, with grounds whenever the refusal is confirmed.

Specific appeals procedure laid down by the national inter-professional agreement of 3 July 1991.
Coming under the national inter-professional agreement of 3 July 1991, the FONGECIFs have a joint appeals body which is responsible for examining employees' grievances concerning decisions to fund their application when it has been partly or wholly rejected. The employee is notified of the joint appeals body's reasoned decision under the responsibility of its Board of administration. When the employee feels that this decision does not respect the rules laid down by COPACIF, (Comité paritaire du Congé individuel de formation - Joint Committee for Personal Training Leave), or the approved joint body, the fund in question forwards the dossier and its opinion to the COPACIF at the request of the employee. Using this information the COPACIF informs the fund in question of its conclusions, which then forwards them to the employee as quickly as possible.

SOURCES OF FINANCE Personal training leave is funded by companies, the State and its regions

1. Company participation
The personal training leave contribution For the purpose of funding personal training leave (remuneration and training expenses), all companies with 10 employees or more are required to pay contributions to joint bodies (OPACIF) to a tune of 0.20% of aggregate gross remunerations.
These bodies ensure the funding of personal training leave applications for all company employees.

Extensive branch agreements lay down the conditions under which part of the contribution owed for personal training leave (0.20%) up to a limit of 50% of this payment, must be earmarked as training time appropriations.

Direct company participation
Employers may also opt to participate directly in the funding of training leave for employees in their company. Such participation may be in addition to the involvement of the joint collection body approved for personal training leave purposes.
It may be used to top up the employee's pay, part or all of the training expenses, or travel and accommodation costs. This participation may also be independent of the intervention of the approved joint body.

2. Funding by the State and regions
Agreements drawn up by the joint bodies approved for personal training leave determine the scope and the conditions for participation by the State and regions in the course funding, as well as for the payment of those on training leave.

REMUNERATION

The employee is entitled to pay equal to a given percentage of the salary he would have received had he stayed in his job.

Floor
Application of the given percentage of the previous salary should not result in pay amounting to less than twice the minimum wage or the previous salary when it is itself less than twice the minimum wage.

Amount
Previous salary < 2 x minimum wage
When the salary does not amount to twice the minimum wage, the amount of pay received by the employee is equal to 100% of the salary throughout the entire personal training leave.

Salary or equal to 2 x minimum wage
The level of pay varies according to the duration of personal training leave. The employee nevertheless has the guarantee that his pay will at least be equal to twice the minimum wage throughout his personal training leave.

Duration of leave not exceeding one year or 1200 hours
The amount of pay received by the employee is equal to 80% of his salary (or 90% if a priority action, where the duration of training leave does not exceed one year or 1200 hours part-time).

Duration of leave exceeding one year or 1200 hours
If the training leave exceeds one year or 1200 hours part-time, the level of pay is equal to:

• 80% of the previous salary (or 90% for priority actions) for the first year, or the first 1200 hours if training is part-time;
• 60% of the previous salary for that part of leave which exceeds one year or 1200 hours part time.

Priority training action
The employee is entitled to pay equivalent to 90% of the salary he would have received had he stayed in his post (instead of 80% the first year) when training comes under one of the following categories:

• courses leading to a qualification where they are sanctioned by a qualification or technological teaching diploma on the one hand or, on the other, they are open to candidates who have been tested and who have then been given guidance where necessary: the booster cycles which may be required are also covered by the same guarantees concerning full payment of remunerations;
• courses corresponding to a personal retraining objective which are not part of a training plan or State compensation system;
• courses intended to lead to the exercise of responsibility in social life, excluding training of a political or trade union nature;
• courses leading to a recognised qualification in the training credit framework;
• courses defined by the COPACIF as being priorities in terms of objectives and content, detailed and completed where necessary by the joint collection body approved for the purpose of personal training leave which is meeting the cost.

The rules defined above represent the minima by which all the OPACIF are bound within the limits of available funding. But whilst respecting these rules, each OPACIF may set better rates of pay. The OPACIF may also set a higher level of funding when the employee raises specific circumstances.

Top up pay from the employer
Irrespective of the funding rules laid down by the collection bodies approved for personal training leave purposes, the employer may top up the remuneration which they pay in order to provide the employee on personal training leave with an income equivalent to his previous one.

TRAINING COSTS

Funding by the OPACIF
The joint collecting bodies approved for personal training leave purposes are entitled to fund all or part of the costs related to training, particularly registration fees, travel and accommodation expenses.

Each joint approved collecting body is free to set the rules according to which it will meet these expenses, either totally or in part.

Possibility of funding by the employer
The employer is under no financial obligation as far as the cost of training is concerned. He is nonetheless free to contribute wholly or partly to these expenses. Should he choose to do so, he may deduct these expenses from the amount he contributes to the funding of continuing vocational training according to current regulations.

In 1998 the number of applications for personal training leave was up slightly (+0.7%) compared with 1997. However, there was a slight fall in the level of acceptance: -0.98%, i.e. 47.96%. The rate of refusal was consolidated compared with the preceding year: 39.62% instead of 39.29%. In 1999, 23957 applications were accepted (Projet de loi de finances 2001).

In 1998 2,484,420 million were collected and the average cost of personal training leave amounted to 110,000 francs (including remuneration).

In the same year the average duration of personal training leave was 924 hours (as opposed to 922 hours in 1997 and 974 hours in 1996). Courses taken in relation to personal training leave tend to be long: 34.64% exceed 1200 hours and 63.9% lead to a State or official diploma. The majority of people taking personal training leave are in employment (42.63%) and young (the under 35s represent 56.25%).