Too poorly used, the CPF? The government wishes to introduce a remainder of at least 10% for beneficiaries of the personal training account. And this to save money, but also because “the system still has limits in terms of efficiency,” explains Bercy. The Ministry of the Economy thus mentions the fraud, but also its “questions about the relevance of the training followed”, recalling that one in five would not have a professional aim.
This training budget, supplemented by companies and the State, 17% of beneficiaries actually said they used it without any professional purpose, according to a Dares study published in 2023. In a third of cases, it was training in a foreign language (compared to 16% of training on average). Seniors are over-represented in these training courses for purely personal reasons, of which they make up 20% of the public (compared to 6% of the public on average).
But the two motives are not always as distinct as they seem, the study points out. “Half of the people declaring that they were taking CPF training for a personal purpose” also declared “at least one professional objective among those proposed in the survey” such as retraining, doing their job better or improving their career prospects.
For a third of CPF beneficiaries, it is mainly a question of improving their career prospects with training. A quarter of them also mention retraining. They are just as many in favor of gaining efficiency at work or even obtaining certification to be better recognized.
In 2022, the most requested training courses were for the driving license (17%), business creation (14%), the TOEIC (a certifying English test, 7%) or the skills assessment (5%) , according to the balance sheet of the Caisse des Dépôts. In some cases, beneficiaries come at the request of their employer, to obtain certification necessary for their work.
Nearly one in two people who used their CPF to finance their B license (code, driving course or both) said they needed it to go to work, 29% as part of their professional activity, according to Dares. One in five times, the CPF did not fully cover the cost of the training, leaving the beneficiary to pay, sometimes more than 500 euros.
