education

The Spanish Education Minister, José Ignacio Wert, continues to target the Catalan school system. He is trying to pass a recentralising education reform “to eliminate the 17 school systems” in place in each Autonomous Community. In addition, he is “firmly decided” on making Spanish a school teaching language in Catalonia, going against the current legislation and two declarations of the Spanish Constitutional Court. The Catalan Government has reminded people that Catalan students have better results in Spanish language than the average throughout Spain, perfectly guaranteeing the knowledge of both Spanish and Catalan. The civil society organisation defending Catalan language accused Wert of “adding demagogical political tensions”.

In the middle of the political storm referring to the relations between Catalonia and Spain, the Spanish Government announced an education reform that recentralises the school curriculum and evaluation system. The Catalan Education Ministry qualified the reform as a “total recentralisation” and a “total attack” against Catalonia’s Statute of Autonomy. In the reform, the Spanish Government would impose 65% of the school curriculum and would run evaluations at the end of school and high school.

Three days after the 1.5 million strong demonstration for Catalonia’s independence, partially fuelled by the Spanish nationalism’s recentralisation attempts and the lack of respect to Catalonia’s self-government, language and culture, the Spanish Government is about to approve a reduction in Catalonia’s share in the definition of the school curriculum. Furthermore, the Spanish Education Minister wants to establish “homogenous evaluations” throughout Spain, although the Catalan Government exclusively manages such evaluations, as well as the school facilities and staff.

The new city government is considering the continuation of a project started by the last Mayor. The venture proposed by the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA), the specialist higher education institution co-founded by Paul McCartney, is to open a Barcelona version (BIPA) in the coastal town of Sitges. The previous proposals included a large scale urban development plan, however the new Sitges Town Council would now use existing buildings. A public competition to manage the project could be opened in the upcoming months.

The tribunal declares null and void the 2008 Catalan government decree which stated that Catalan “should be used as the language of instruction” for pupils between 3 and 6 years old. The Supreme Court also overturned the article that banned the separation of pupils for linguistic reasons and the one that established that teachers should guarantee that foreign pupils learn Catalan in order to achieve “rapid integration”. The Catalan minister for Education, Irene Rigau, says “all stays the same” because the education law is newer than the decree affected by the ruling and also states that Catalan is the language of instruction in Catalonia.

On Tuesday the Catalan Council for Constitutional Guarantees (CGE) declared that the Spanish Government decree cutting €3 billion in education does not respect 2 Constitution articles and 5 other articles from Catalonia’s Statute of Autonomy, being thus unconstitutional and going beyond Madrid’s jurisdiction. The Catalan Government following the CGE’s unconstitutionality assessment decided to bring the education decree to the Constitutional Court(TC), as it did last week with Rajoy’s health decree. However, after the Spanish Government threatened to bring approved initiatives from the Catalan Executive to the TC, the Catalan Government decided to modify the decrees through dialogue and bring the decrees to the TC as a last option.

The third plan represents an additional budget cut of €1.5 billion, in order to meet the 1.5% deficit target for this year. The President of the Catalan Government, Artur Mas, said that the plan “guarantees essential services”. He also stated that if the Spanish Government had paid what it owed last year, the current reduction would be halved. The plan decreases budget allocations for public companies, reduces public employee salaries once again, decreases the amount allocated for subsidies, delays investments, privatises some public companies, sells public buildings, and implements the measures decided by the Spanish Government regarding health and education. The opposition criticised the plan for not being concrete and effective enough.

The Catalan Government has announced a plan against the Spanish Government’s “recentralisation offensive”. One of its actions is taking the education and healthcare reforms adopted by Madrid to the Catalan Council for Constitutional Guarantees, as a first step to bring them to Spain’s Constitutional Court. The Catalan Government believes that some of the measures invade its jurisdiction, as it directly manages education and healthcare. Another measure is issuing a report pointing out the Spanish Government’s duplicities, such as maintaining ministries such as education, healthcare and culture. These policies are managed by the Autonomies. Left-Wing opposition parties have urged the Catalan Government to take further measures, while the PP has accused the Catalan Executive of “lying”.

The Spanish Minister for Education met with his counterparts from the Autonomous Communities and imposed 6 measures that must be adopted to save €3 billion. The Catalan Minister considers that three of the measures might invade powers managed by the Autonomies, and therefore the Spanish Government might be ruling beyond its jurisdiction. The Catalan Government will study them and does not rule out bringing the Spanish Government to the Constitutional Court. Nonetheless, the Spanish Minister reminded that, before a judge says the contrary, the measures are still obligatory. Besides, the Catalan Minister also emphasised the previous austerity efforts made by the Catalan Government also in Education, and the Spanish Ministry’s “lack of knowledge” about them.

IESE has been ranked the fourth best business school in Europe in 2011 and ESADE the seventh. Both Catalan education centres have improved their positions since last year’s FT ranking.

The Catalan Government appealed the order of the Catalan Supreme Court, which insisted that the Catalan school system should be modified in order to comply with the Spanish Supreme Court’s sentence from last December to include Spanish as language of instruction. With the Government’s appeal, the Court’s deadline is automatically suspended, until the Court decides on the appeal. The appeal is based on two sentences from the Spanish Constitutional Court validating the Catalan school model, as well as on the linguistic immersion principle which guarantees social cohesion and equal opportunities.

A parliamentary motion has been approved, backing the Catalan linguistic immersion model at public schools. It was approved with the votes of all of the parliamentary groups except those from the People’s Party (PP) and the Unión Progreso y Democracia (UPyD). The motion received 192 “yes” votes and 148 “no” ones. It is the Spanish Parliament’s answer to the controversy over Spanish as language of instruction in Catalan public schools.

This Monday Catalan pupils begin their school year. 1,280,232 students from elementary, primary and secondary education returned to the classrooms with normality. However, controversies are lingering over this year. The Catalan language at schools, the sixth hour of tuition and budget restrictions all frame the school year’s kick off. The day finished with teacher and parent demonstrations in front of town halls defending the Catalan school model.

The chairman of the committee on Education, Doris Pack, defends the Catalan model of education and says that people coming from outside Catalonia have to make an effort to learn the language of their new home: "It's like immigration in Germany, we do not have Turkish schools, newcomers need to get used to speak the language", she argued in an interview with the CNA.

The Catalan Supreme Court of Justice issues a court order giving the Catalan Government 2 months to change the current school model and include Spanish as a school language of instruction. The Government will appeal. Teacher unions and the main parent associations back the current model. Currently, Catalan is the language used and Spanish is taught in school but only as a subject. For the Catalan Government, the court decision breaks a model praised by international organisations, which guarantees social cohesion and the knowledge of both languages by all pupils.