Workers’ Commissions have called a strike for next May 7 in the stage for students from zero to three years old in all nursery schools in Spain, both public and private, to demand an improvement, as well as a salary increase. The salary demand is focused on private centers, where the salaries of educators (the sector is 97% feminized) barely exceed the interprofessional minimum wage. “We have poor workers. Many explain to us that they need to have another job to make ends meet,” said Teresa Esperabé, general secretary of the CC OO Teaching Federation, the union with the greatest representation at this stage, when announcing the call.
The strike in the stage, and with this step it generalizes to the entire country. In several communities, platforms for 0-3 education have been created in recent months, of which in some cases unions are part – especially CC OO and CGT, which has announced that it will also call a strike at the stage – and workers’ groups. The platforms do not have the capacity, however, to officially call strikes.
61,000 educators work in early childhood education, distributed almost equally between public and private education, and there are about 11,000 educational centers attended by half a million children.
The maximum ratios allowed by educational regulations – which the Ministry of Education, as EL PAÍS reported, under pressure from the autonomous communities and employers’ associations – are eight babies per classroom in the 0-1 year class; 13 children in 1-2, and 20 children in 2-3. Numbers that, as Esparabé recalled, far exceed the recommendation of the European Union, which stands at four babies in the 0-1 class; 6 in the 1-2, and 8 in the 2-3. CC OO has called on the Government to take advantage of the bill to lower ratios in Primary and ESO to improve the numbers at this stage.
Very long days
The working hours of educators in private education are also much longer than other educational cycles, with 38 hours of class per week – in Primary and the second cycle of Infants (3-6), the ministry and the unions have agreed to reduce them to 23, and in ESO to 18 – which, as pointed out by the head of CC OO, prevents them from devoting time to preparing the sessions.
The union also demands that the autonomous communities implement the obligation for there to be “educational couples” (that is, two educators or a teacher and a teacher) in 0-3 classrooms, another recommendation from the European Union. Specialized personnel in schools so that students with educational support needs can attend class, and more public places. And to employers, a salary increase that progressively equates the salary of private schools with what they earn in public centers.
The abandonment of the stage, fragmented into various management models (there are private schools, other privately managed public schools, other municipal public schools and also autonomous ones) has been regularly denounced by specialists such as Vicenç Arnaiz. “Since the ratios were established for all educational centers in 1991, the number of students per teacher has been reduced by half in the entire educational system except in 0-3. Thus it happens that a professional must care for eight babies for six or seven hours a day. Educational sciences and laws insist more and more on the personalization and quality of treatment to students. With eight babies? With twelve one-year-olds?,” he denounces.
