Lomloe’s third course begins – in the classrooms – and it does so without having resolved the problems inherited from past years, with the lack of vocational training places in some communities, with the threat renewed protests of the green tides, which ended last year in a combative manner in several communities against the cuts, and also with new developments: this year begins the educational reinforcement program announced by the President of the Government and the new selectivity by skills arrives, with the supposed ripple effect that Lomloe must finish implementing in the Baccalaureate. In addition, the unions demand that the government respect the law and begin to negotiate the teaching statute that articulates everything related to the professional career of teachers.
The reinforcement plan
It will be a year of new developments. In chronological order, the first to arrive in the classrooms is the reinforcement plan in mathematics and reading announced by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, after the poor results of Spanish students in the latest edition of the PISA report. The plan has four lines of action: allowing classes during extracurricular hours, reducing the number of students per class in these subjects, providing more training for teachers both in the content of their subjects and in the didactics associated with them (the way in which they are taught) and providing resources to the centers so that the management teams can manage them as they see fit.
But the program will start with fewer resources compared to an initial allocation already described as “insufficient” at the time. The Government’s idea was to start with 500 million euros (less than 1% of the education budget), but the lack of state budgets has led it to leave it at 95 million for the time being. This item is for 2024. In 2025, there will be “more money if there are no budgets and much more if there are”, according to a spokesperson for the Ministry of Education. The plan will affect nearly five million students from the last year of kindergarten to the 4th year of ESO, i.e. the entire compulsory cycle.
A new draft
Selectivity (or Ebau, Evau, Pau) also debuts with a new format to adapt the most famous of the tests to the new law. The model approved by Education will have between four and nine exams, common correction criteria throughout Spain to achieve equality and the correction of style and spelling will be valued up to 10%. In addition and above all, we are moving to a competency-based model that is supposed to lead the baccalaureate to teach in this way as well, which according to teachers is not currently the case.
The reform also reduces the choice of students, but in exchange it will allow them – depending on the decisions of the autonomous communities – to use tools such as calculators, dictionaries or formula tables. This permissiveness with the supports would be the demonstration that the new selectivity seeks that students “know how to do”; it is not about memorizing the information, but knowing how to use it.
There is a shortage of teachers
But, in addition to these novelties, with the same reliability that the school year arrives every September, the usual problems of the school year also arise: the autonomous communities like to accelerate the call for the thousands of temporary workers who must complete their templates, who end up joining the first day of classes without having had time to prepare. This year, the noise comes from the Aragonese unions, but it is a problem that affects all the communities.
To these organizational problems, which make the task difficult but which are eventually resolved, will be added a growing shortage of teaching staff in scientific disciplines. There are simply not enough of them and they are diverted from other disciplines, a problem that encompasses all academic and training paths. Last year, there were professional training cycles in which students spent weeks without a teacher.
And there is no room in the FP
This is not the only problem facing vocational training, which is dying of success. The impetus given to this stage has permeated society, which is beginning to see it as a more than valid alternative – until recently it was the poor sister of the university – and considers it a good educational option. But this impetus has not been accompanied by the creation of enough public places, so that for a few courses every September, tens of thousands of candidates repeatedly find themselves without a place, especially in Catalonia and Madrid. In the Catalan case, the Generalitat has acknowledged that there were 31,000 students who had not obtained a place in either the higher or intermediate degree.
Green tides, mobilized
This also promises a sharp drop in union activity. After a few years of calm, the green tides resumed their protest activity towards the end of last year and, they assure, they are not going to stop. In this case, the demands go by neighborhood, but with a common ground: new waves of cuts in the autonomies where Vox and PP govern and an increase in privatizations (or public funds dedicated to concerted private ones).
In communities like Madrid (and Asturias until a few days ago) there is also a fight for teachers’ teaching hours, a vestige of the budget cuts of the previous crisis and that most communities have already canceled. But not the department of Madrid, one of the few that still maintains the increase in weekly class hours for teachers, approved a long decade ago by the former popular minister José Ignacio Wert.
In Andalusia there is a battle over the ratios of students per class; in the Valencian Community for the “attack on the Valencian language” that many see, including the Valencian Academy of the Language, in the new law prepared by the Generalitat. In the Balearic Islands, Catalan has also taken to the streets and in many communities (Madrid, Valencian Community, Aragon, Balearic Islands, La Rioja) the single educational district has been established, a measure that has proven beneficial for the population. wealthier classes.
And the status of teacher?
With flags raised, the unions warn Education against the other major front that they hope to open this year: “This should be the teachers’ course. It is the great pending pedagogical debate that remains, once the laws are approved (Lomloe, LOSU, FP law, Artistic Education), which has also been initiated”, recalls Francisco García, president of the CCOO Education federation.
Garcia is right. The seventh additional provision of the Lomloe establishes that, “within one year of the entry into force of the law,” the government had to present a regulatory proposal “that regulates, among other aspects, initial and continuing training, access and professional development.” The Ministry of Education fulfilled this obligation diligently (with a few days’ delay, in fact) with a document that contained “24 measures related to access to preschool and primary levels, the master’s degree in teacher training, the practices of future teachers and teacher evaluation, among others.
The unions saw in this document – presented two and a half years ago and which has not had continuity – a minimum of the government to comply with self-imposition, and now they demand that there be continuity. “The debate on the teaching profession is urgent,” says García. “On entry, continuing education, remuneration… We believe that there is a need for regulation of the profession that extends from entry to exit,” agrees his colleague Maribel Loranca, from the UGT.
The ministry will open the debate, says a spokesman. In fact, he explains, there have already been “informal” conversations and next September they will send them a schedule of meetings to launch it definitively.
