Spain reopens its educational centers on Monday, which as of September 8 will begin to arrive more than eight million students. Among the first challenges of the new course is to manage a rapid increase diversity. The system has reached the highest figure of its history, 1,125,860, which represents 30% more than a five years. In seven Spanish provinces, one in four elementary students in public schools comes from other countries.
Its incorporation is a source of cultural enrichment and (and teaching jobs): without them, the huge hole that the birth of birth has opened in schools, which have lost about 200,000 students in five years, would have been 40% higher. Teachers and other education experts warn, however, that the great imbalance in the distribution of these students between the public and concerted school network, and the absence of additional resources in the first to welcome them, make the difficulties derived from the language, the gap of learning with which many arrive, and the aggravation of the precariousness in which many live as a result of factors such as the increasing of factors, especially the public, especially the public.
The latest data from the Ministry of Education, published at the end of June, refer to the last year, and do not differentiate, within private education, between the one that is subsidized (the concerted) and the one that does not. The registration of students of the concerted represents, on the other hand, almost three quarters of the total in private centers.
Foreign students represents 12.9% of the total general regime teachings (which encompasses Baccalaureate and FP from childhood). But in ESO they reach 13.9%, and in Primary, 15.5%. And in the latter, in public schools, they suppose 17.7%.
Within that average, the difference by territories is, however, high. The seven provinces where the most proportion of foreign kids have primary schools are in half east of the Iberian Peninsula, and generally stand out because of the importance of hospitality and agriculture in their economy – in modalities that require a lot of labor -, and, in some cases, for not having much population.
They are Alicante (29%of foreign students), Lleida (27%), La Rioja (26.4%), Castellón (26.1%), Murcia (24.8%), Girona (24.7%), and Teruel (24.6%). At the other extreme, with a much lower proportion, seven provinces located in the southern half or the west peninsular: Ciudad Real (7.4%), Pontevedra (6.5%), Badajoz (5.5%), Jaén (5.2%), Seville (4.9%), Córdoba (4.8%), and Cádiz (4.7%).
The autonomy where foreign kids have greater weight in primary school in the public school is the Valencian Community (26.2%), and the least, Extremadura (6.3%).
A great imbalance
Spanish public schools host almost 50% more foreign kids than private. But in several provinces, wild differences are achieved: Almería (383%), Álava (256%), Segovia (232%), Ávila (213%), Murcia (199%), Navarra (136%), Castellón (111%).
Understand why such percentages would be reached would require detailed local analyzes in each of them ―In Almería, for example, in addition to other factors, such as the concentration of the foreign population in coastal municipalities such as Níjar, the ejido Roquetas de Mar or the capital itself, the private school has a very small weight: only enrollment to 13.4% of the total, the third lower provincial volume of Spain -, says Xavier Bonal. Autonomous University of Barcelona.
A key element is, in any case, Bonal points out, the profile that concerted schools have in both places, and their willingness to serve the “public interest.” In that sense, for example, the data of Álava and, in general of the Basque Country, do not surprise Bonal, specialized in educational segregation for socio -economic reasons. “They have a high volume, which gives them an elitist profile,” he says.
If there are no policies that promote a more balanced distribution of foreign students, and in general vulnerable, among educational networks, decompensation will tend to stay or even get worse, believe Bonal, since the impoverishment of immigrant students – His poverty risk and exclusion rate of the foreign children tactics not to school.
The sociologist points at the same time, however, that in areas especially punished by the fall in birth, the concerted can act on the contrary and open more to this students to alleviate their tuition descent.
The case of Catalonia, the Autonomous Community where foreign students are less segregated by educational networks, shows, on the contrary, “that policies can be demonstrated effective to address the problem; they do not solve everything, but some things do,” Bonal continues. Foreign kids represent 21.1% of the total public school in primary school, and 18.9% in private. As a contrast, in Murcia the percentages are 24.8% and 8.3% respectively, which makes it the most segregator community.
An example that works
Bonal points as the cause of the situation in Catalonia the decree that the Generalitat approved in 2021 – in the framework of a pact against the school segregation to which the Generalitat, more than a hundred municipalities and other educational actors -, that has improved the detection of vulnerable students and their balanced distribution between public and concerted centers ”.
The city of Barcelona began to apply its own shock plan in 2019, and now, in the whole province (the statistics of the Ministry does not offer municipal data), the public school only enrolls to 0.6% more of foreign children than the private one.
The imbalance occurs between networks and also within them. Isabel Moreno, president of the Association of Valencian Directors of Public Colleges and responsible for a school in Xàbia (Alicante), points out that in its center the percentage of students of foreign origin reaches 61%, 30% of the students do not know the vehicle languages of the classroom, and part of the kids live in homes with very precarious conditions, “worse than a few years ago.”
Moreno, who is also a vice president of the State Federation of Directors of Public Centers, urgently considers a change in the regulations so that the resources received by the schools cease to be basically linked to the number of classes, as is the case now. “You cannot treat a school in the interior of Alicante, which has 12 or 13 students per classroom, which one like mine, with all classes to 27, linguistic difficulties and boys and girls with serious economic deficiencies. You have to turn around,” he says.
Global descent
Education data reflects that the total number of students in the general regime teachings decreased with respect to the previous one as a result of the decrease in birth. The decline was small, of 13,245 students, 0.2% of the total, until it is at 8,319,029. But it is the first time that it happens for structural reasons since the 2001-2002 academic year. In two courses of the pandemic there were descents, but it was due to the decision of thousands of families not to school their children in children, and the figure later traced.
Birth began to fall in Spain in 2009. But so far the global student figure had continued to increase as a result of the expansion of the first cycle of children, 0-3 (in recent years there are less children born, but despite this every year they have enrolled more); Professional training (especially higher cycles), as well as the arrival of foreign kids.
All of them continued to increase last year, but they have no longer been able to compensate for the impact of the fall in birth in the second cycle of children, primary and ESO. Three stages covered by 13 courses, whose schooling rate is practically 100%, and totaling 5,875,978 students, 70% of the total.
