No OECD country has a greater separation of students between rich and poor in the public system. Spain is the advanced country with the highest number of socio-economically advantaged students in charter schools and the lowest in public schools, according to the report. For an inclusive charter schoolin which Save The Children analyses 18 education systems across the world.
The study, conducted with the aim of moving towards a more inclusive charter school, also poses some more or less intuitive or known questions about these private schools supported by public funds: their simple existence does not prevent an educational system from being equitable – as demonstrated in other countries –; the performance of students in both networks is similar; These centers are not motivated by religious motivations and proliferate where “families have sufficient financial capacity”; In addition, many families cannot afford to pay these fees.
But it also breaks a spear in favor of these centers. The public funding they receive, the text explains, is insufficient, which leads them to seek other sources of funding that families must face – tuition fees, canteen, school transport. And it is precisely these alternative routes that exclude many students from the concerted path. If the administrations invested more in these centers, argue the authors, this vicious circle could be broken and subsidized private schools could be open to all (in theory).
It doesn’t have to be like this
Save the Children makes some strong points in its study: Spanish charter schools are failing families, are not inclusive, are not performing better and are seeking to locate in wealthy areas. But there is also room for optimism: it doesn’t have to be this way, the organisation says. The characteristics so typical of Spain’s subsidised private sector are not intrinsic to this school model, they are unique to it. There are states – such as the Netherlands or Britain – where there is no difference between one network and another. According to Alfonso Echazarra, the author of the study, it can even be offensive to suggest that there are differences.
This is not the case in Spain. There are differences here, starting with the composition of the student body, the report explains, which ends up affecting the entire system. “It is not surprising that Spain is the educational system in which the socioeconomic differences between educational centers are explained more by the socioeconomic differences that occur between public and subsidized networks. In the Spanish case, almost 21% of school segregation (measured by the socioeconomic differences between schools) is explained by the unequal socioeconomic composition between charter schools and public schools. This fact makes Spain an unfortunately unique case,” says Save the Children. In other countries where charter schools exist (private schools that obtain at least 50% of their funding from public sources), this differentiation between students depending on whether the school is public or charter does not exist.
Another study, carried out by the BBVA Foundation and the Ivie Institute, broke it down into data: public centers assume “almost exclusively”, the report specifies, the training of students from less favorable socio-economic backgrounds (they have 60% of students from less favorable socio-economic backgrounds) (27.1% and 7.5% respectively).
There are also differences within Spain. Murcia is the community where students are most separated according to their socio-economic level, followed by the Community of Madrid and the Canary Islands, while Cantabria, Galicia and Aragon are the least separated.
Worse funding, greater segregation
It’s all linked, says Save the Children, to the vicious circle of (under)funding of charter schools. The premise is, in purely numerical terms, correct: charter schools enroll nearly 30% of compulsory school pupils, but account for 12.5% of total public spending. It can be argued that their costs are reduced because they are not present in the countryside, where education is more expensive, or because they serve far fewer pupils with educational support needs, but the numbers are what they are.
This underfunding, the NGO believes, pushes the centers to seek additional private funding based on school fees, school canteens with prices higher than public prices or transport services (all of this legally, it is provided for in the law). And it is these additional expenses that leave the poorest families out of this circuit, because they cannot afford it.
To move towards a more inclusive charter school, Save the Children is asking administrations (the central government sets the minimum module per charter unit, which the autonomous communities can complete) to increase funding for charter schools and thus break this spiral. The report compares the situation in Spain with that of other countries and concludes that “public funding for charter schools appears to be linked to the socio-economic differences observed between students enrolled in public schools and charter schools.”
In other words, where the charter school is better funded by the state, there is less difference between students attending public and subsidized private centers. When families do not have to pay, they mix more. This can even be coded: for every 10 percentage points increase in family funding for a school, the percentage of socioeconomically disadvantaged students in that school decreases by 1.3 percentage points. Spain, where the state funds about 75% of subsidized school budgets, is one of the countries that injects the least money into its subsidized private centers.
money problem
Another idea put forward by Save the Children is that, contrary to what is sometimes sold, charter schools do not respond to a social need for “freedom of school choice” based on religious sentiment. Save the Children asked “why in Andalusia there are not so many charter schools, if it is supposed to satisfy the religious preferences of families,” explains the author. And cross-referenced data.
The result? “Charter schools proliferate where families have the financial means” to meet the costs involved, Echazarra says. “It doesn’t seem that religion is driving more charter schools. The reason there’s more or less agreement is the financial means of families. The data is devastating because the relationship is almost perfect,” he says.
The Canary Islands, Andalusia, Extremadura and Castilla-La Mancha with the four communities with the lowest GDP per capita in Spain; They are also the four with the lowest percentage of students in private charter schools. On the other hand, Euskadi, Navarra, the Community of Madrid and La Rioja are those with the highest income and the first three are also those with the most students in the subsidized system.
The NGO theory is supported if we look at the relationship between the presence of the concerted organization and the religiosity of the territory (which in some way is also linked, inversely, to income: the higher the income, the lower the percentage of believers): the communities with the most people declaring themselves religious are those that are the least in agreement.
The same thing happens when we talk about charter schools and rural areas: the more rural an autonomous community is, the fewer such schools it will have.
The black hole of extra points
Finally, the report makes a series of recommendations to improve inclusivity in charter schools. Once the diagnosis has been made, some proposals are expected: improve public funding for these centers so that they do not leave families behind, provide additional funds for students based on their vulnerability, remove the possibility that some services are for-profit or admission processes are managed by the administration.
But the director of Save the Children, Andrés Conde, focused particularly on one aspect: the extra points for free enrollment that schools in Spain have, which are often used to perpetuate family sagas or favor potential donors or certain profiles of fathers and mothers. For example, awarding a point based on religious criteria (parents who studied at a Catholic center or university or who come from another Catholic school), belonging to the congregation that runs the center or being registered in the sports club owned by the company or organization that runs the center. the school. “Or the criterion that gives points for having former students who are members of the family, the one that gives points for enrolling in the first level of nursery school, which, not being universal, is not necessarily funded and favors wealthy families,” he lists. “The admission criteria with potential exclusion must be eliminated,” concludes Condé.
