In the midst of negotiating the 2025 budgets, the PNV government and PSE-EE had many allies for an express modification of the 2024 budgets. The PP and Vox supported a text designed “ad hoc” to inject 67 million euros into the budget. . employers of concerted education, religious schools, ikastolas and cooperatives, which in Euskadi brings together almost 50% of students, the highest in Spain. Even EH Bildu did not object and chose to abstain. This is the first law of Imanol Pradales’ first mandate and it is justified by the desire to assimilate the working conditions of staff in private centers to those of public centers. Other games will be offered in the coming years, until the 2026/2027 academic year. Only Sumar clearly opposed it with a supposed defense of public education.
The rule was developed in “single reading”, that is to say in emergency legislative procedure, without the possibility of amendments or appearances in committee, even if councilor Begoña Pedrosa proposed to give explanations “motu owner.” It was precisely during this session that two internal reports from the Basque Government appeared which partly call into question the extraordinary injection of 50 for the Catholic religious schools of Kristau Eskola and assimilated and of 17 for the ikastolas and assimilated. The Department of Legislative Development and Regulatory Oversight has warned that the law’s file does not include documents containing specific agreements with private school employers who receive public funds and who account for that money. And the Economic Control Bureau indicated that the 67 million will go to the “owner of the center”, that is to say not directly to the teachers whose remuneration must be increased by around 15 to 16% (the figure is indicative, because it is very variable and involves retroactive amounts from 2023) and there is no guarantee that this payment will be made.
It is significant that neither the Lehendakari, Imanol Pradales, nor the leader of the PES-EE, Eneko Andueza, were present at the debate. Pradales is back from his first major official trip abroad, which he made these days to Brussels and other centers of power in the European Union. The Socialists did not provide specific information on Andueza, even though he has previously been absent from other plenary sessions. Technically, the Executive found itself without an absolute majority, since it had 36 parliamentarians present plus the delegated vote of Maitane Ipiñazar, on maternity leave, even if the “yes” reached 43 thanks to the support of the right . In the opposition, however, is still absent Muriel Larrea, of the PP, who is precisely the educational spokesperson of her party and who is recovering from an illness.
The PP was represented by Álvaro Gotxi. He assured that his party is “happy” that a “request” for private schools is being met, even if he criticized the fact that it arrives “late” and denounced the process as “muddy” and without concrete data proposed by the Executive. “Even if we support it, it’s a shoddy job,” Gotxi even said. Vox said they were voting “yes” more by “holding their noses.” Its sole representative, Amaia Martínez Grisaleña, criticized the fact that the case was handled “with haste and speed”.
In his turn to explain the vote, Ikoitz Arrese of EH Bildu began by emphasizing that “not all charter schools are the same”, for example with regard to the level of Basque or secularism. He said the new education law does not actually ensure that all private schools that receive funding meet the requirements. In any case, they confirmed that they “clearly” saw the “meaning” of the finance law, even if they only “partially” shared its forms. “Although the measure is appropriate, there are dozens of other measures that should be applied,” he said, appealing to the 2022 education pact concluded with the government and which was later overtaken by the legislative reform of 2023 for which they no longer voted. in favor.
Only Jon Hernández, the only representative of Sumar, took the opposite view. He quipped that when the 2024 budgets were negotiated, “there was no money” for education and now “all of a sudden” 67 million people have prospered while there there were “needs” for their own network. Hernández claims that Euskadi wants to “artificially” maintain the “dual and segregationist” model in a context of falling birth rates. He demanded plans to “publicize” private schools and not a “red carpet” for employers. “No more funding and no form of control,” he summarized. The PP censored their intervention, ensuring that it wanted to apply the model of Nicolas Maduro’s Venezuela. Almost at the end he admitted to having studied in a religious school.
From the government training, Alaitz Zabala of the PNV, who assured that she took her children to public schools, estimated that if teachers in private centers do the same work as civil servants, they must have the same conditions. The nationalists promised to be “vigilant” so that the 67 million are actually allocated to the equalization of salaries and also that this is a further step towards effective “freedom”. Tuition has been banned in charter schools for decades, but it continues to be charged regularly in the Basque Country. And the socialist Susana Corcuera indicated that her party “fully supports” the law, which has “all” the relationships in order. In line with Zabala, he finally indicated that giving more money to subsidized centers would in return lead to more “conditions”. Among them, they never earn more than public teachers, a risk Sumar warned against.
