The Ministry of Education wants to reduce by Law the Rat of Students per classroom in the educational centers attended by disadvantaged students. A proposal that has presented on Tuesday to the teaching unions at the most important meeting they have held since at the beginning of the year the negotiation for teaching staff was opened. Education rules out a general drop of the number of students per class and chooses to apply what it describes as a criterion of “equity”, according to sources attending the meeting that is being developed this morning. One of the consequences of this is that students, and teachers, of public education will be the main beneficiary of the measure, since enrolling the immense most of the vulnerable students. Specifically, 12.5 more than what would correspond based on its weight in the educational network as a whole.
The measure will be articulated through two lines. On the one hand, a ratio decrease linked to the presence of students with educational support needs, and on the other, orienting them to centers that have a low socio -educational level. To this end, a socio -educational vulnerability situation prepared by the Ministry of Education will be created in order to detect those specific centers where the decrease in ratios is most necessary.
The Ministry has indicated that its proposal is not closed, but that a negotiation with the unions prior to the elaboration of a draft law begins. For approval the government will also need to gather support from other groups in Congress. Until now, legally, the maximum ratios are located in 25 students in children and primary, 30 in ESO, and 35 in Baccalaureate, although, in practice, due to the decrease in birth, many communities have approved decreases in the last courses. In Primary they have done 12 of the 17, according to STES calculations. The law that the Government wants to approve will also include, among other measures, the decrease in teaching hours (in the classroom) of teachers, which would remain in 18 in high school and 23 in primary, as they were before the cuts applied in 2012 by the PP government.
The response of the unions, which have one of their great claims in the decrease in ratios, will depend on the details. Although music sounds good for many of them, the key will be how many educational centers can the measure achieve in particular and with what intensity. One of the possibilities that the Ministry considers is that it does not apply to all educational centers, but to those levels (courses) that are more crucial to avoid school failure. Or that does not apply to all subjects, but to those in which the fact of being able to work with smaller groups is more important for students learning.
More teachers
The education proposal starts from the premise that lowering ratios is, in general, positive for all students. But since it is an expensive measure, because it requires the hiring of more teachers and can even specify in some cases more physical space (as the pandemic demonstrated), it is fair to focus on the students who need it most, and the socioeconomic and cultural environment in which students grow is the factor that most influences their performance.
Educational research has also demonstrated that the reduction of ratios (especially if it is powerful) improves the results especially of disadvantaged students. That is, using resources to reduce the number of students in vulnerable students not only increases equity, but also more efficient.
A general decrease, by law, of the maximum ratios would also imply that it should be applied to the entire network, including concerted education, which as regularly shows the indicators enrolled to less vulnerable students that would correspond to it if the distribution were equitable, despite being financed with public funds. Part of the concerted schools, in addition, are not supporters of the declines of ratios, because due to the profile of their students they do not need it so much, and, instead, it can imply an increase in costs.
In January 2022, the Ministry of Education. This sought to fulfill a forecast contained in the educational law, the Lomloe, which established that the Government should present “a normative proposal that regulates, among other aspects, initial and permanent training, access and professional teaching development”. Earlier this year, the Ministry opened negotiation to address this reform with the teaching unions.
The rhythm has been, however, very slow, and this Tuesday is the first document that Education has presented to the unions, circumscribed to a series of specific points. The idea of the government ,. Specifically, as indicated on Tuesday, a reform of Law 4/2019.
This would allow, on the one hand, to shield the changes, and prevent the autonomous communities from contradicting them as happened with the law promoted by the Ministry in 2019, which was limited to recommending to the autonomic executives to limit to 23 hours the class hours of the teaching staff in the Children’s and Primary schools, and 18 of the teachers in the Secondary Institutes. At the same time, however, its processing from a draft law will require time and also that the government achieves the support of its partners, with the added difficulty that nationalist parties are usually shown. That is to say, there is a risk that it will not give time to approve the new law before the end of the legislature (as the last legislature has happened with the Law of Artistic Teachings), or that it does not meet enough support to get ahead in Congress, something, which, however, could end up having a cost for the political formations that oppose the norm.
