Catalan government insists schools return on January 11 despite teachers protests

The Catalan government insists that students will return to school on January 11, despite teachers’ unions calling for remote learning until a new spike in coronavirus cases gets under control.

Health minister Alba Vergés has said there is "no doubt" that schools will reopen next Monday. 

The government’s public health secretary Josep Maria Argimon opened the door to remote learning "within three weeks" if in-person courses are deemed unsafe, but reminded that schools remained open while Catalonia was reporting worse coronavirus figures last fall.

The USTEC-STEs teachers’ union stressed that keeping schools open came at the cost of staff health, and called protests on Friday to demand in person-courses be adjourned.

A spokesperson for the teachers' union, Iolanda Segura, accused the Catalan government and its education ministry of "not doing their homework", since they failed to preemptively test teachers before the new semester starts. 

A researcher at Catalonia’s Polytechnic University (UPC) and member of the Computational Biology and Complex Systems Group (BIOCOM-SC), Clara Prats, says reopening schools poses "risk factor", but explains that the transmission rate among children up to 9 years old is lower than the average.