PUBLIC OR PRIVATE SCHOOLS

HOW FAR CAN WE GO?

The new school year started with strikes in some Communities of Spain that have had cuts in Education for facing the economic crisis.

The affected regions are Madrid, Castilla La Mancha, Navarra and Galicia. The governments of these regions want to raise the number of teachers’ hours to cut down the substitute teachers.

The teachers’  lesson hours have risen from 18 to 20, two hours more than until now. Let’s remind everybody  that teachers work thirty five hours a week, as they also have to attend meetings, prepare lessons and attend courses to be up-dated.

The Ministry of Education expects to save 80 million Euros.

The Ministry of Education and Employment has said that substitute teachers are not necessary because the level is the appropriate for maintaining the helpful classes to students. Teachers claim that with more hours and more students, the quality of their lessons will decrease.

Since then groups of teachers, students and parents were in the Ministry of Education to protest against Esperanza Aguirre’s decision and asking her to withdraw it. It is well-known that Aguirre has always been in favour of Private schools. The usual rate in europe is 80% of Public Education and 20% of Private education; Aguirre has achieved to have a 50% of Private education in Madrid.

María Dolores de Cospedal has declared that, in Castilla, teachers will work from 18 to 20 hours in Secondary School and from 23 to 25 in Primary School.

Castilla La Mancha expects earning 111 million removing substitute teachers. They have said that this change would affect to the next new course 2012-2013 and not to the one we are in.

In Navarra and Galicia, the hours of classes have risen from 18-20 to 21-2,5 more or less.

The cuts in Navarra is a measure to tighten our belts, which means that we have to be aware that our country is going worse and worse each day. They want to face the economic crisis with these changes in Education.

In Galicia, teachers have achieved the maximum hours that are let. They complain that Galicia is one of the Communities where they work more.

Summarizing, in Spain, a 70% of the population who want to become a teacher, has not had the chance of being called as substitute teachers. But these budget cuts will mean also mean more students in a class, no splitting of groups according to their level, reduce of diversity groups, reduce of language assistants, and so on.

The president of ANPE claims that in Spain there is a 31% of students who don’t finish ESO education which is one of the highest rates in Europe. He has also said that the problem won’t be solved with the rise of the work hours.

It is proved that 3,000 substitute teachers will have not work and the quality of teaching will go down.

Spain cannot remember such a problematic course in the last years. It looked like Health was going to be the most important topic for debating, but nowadays Education is as important

by Cristina Naharro Ochoa