The keys to the new school year

Early start

One of the new mea­sures that has cap­tured most head­lines due to the ef­fects it has on teach­ers, pupils and fam­i­lies is the bring­ing for­ward of the school cal­en­dar to Sep­tem­ber 5 for in­fant and pri­mary ed­u­ca­tion, and to Sep­tem­ber 7 for sec­ondary schools. Gonzàlez-Cam­bray be­lieves that this change favours pupils, es­pe­cially the most vul­ner­a­ble, “be­cause it short­ens the long sum­mer break” and helps the fam­ily work life bal­ance. In order to cover the af­ter­noons of Sep­tem­ber, the sec­re­tary en­sured that 100% of pub­li­cally-funded schools al­ready have some 1,683 con­tracts in place to hire school mon­i­tors. He also stated that with the aim of a smooth tran­si­tion to this timetable change, “the ap­point­ment of new teach­ers had been moved for­ward, with 43,302 teach­ers ap­pointed by the end of June, one month ear­lier than usual,” while also com­mit­ting to “eval­u­at­ing progress” in the new year, “in order to “make the best de­ci­sions for the fol­low­ing year”.

One hour less

This was one of the red lines for the unions. From Jan­u­ary 1, 2023, teach­ers will teach one hour less per week in both pri­mary and sec­ondary schools, with the mea­sure start­ing mid-term. “The work­ers’ rep­re­sen­ta­tives have al­ways told us, from day one, that their main aim is to re­duce the teach­ing hours in both pri­mary and sec­ondary schools,” the sec­re­tary ex­plained. “We al­ways do what we say we will do in this de­part­ment. And as soon as we were able to, and there was the bud­get for it, we made the pro­posal to the unions to re­duce the teach­ing hours from Jan­u­ary 1.” This hour re­duc­tion must be ded­i­cated “to co­or­di­na­tion, ped­a­gog­i­cal de­bates and re­spond­ing to the new pro­jects re­quired by the Cata­lan ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem”. The mea­sure will cost 170 mil­lion euros and will re­quire the hir­ing of 3,472 new teach­ers. There will be 1,463 new teach­ers in pri­mary at a cost of 67 mil­lion euros, and 2,009 teach­ers in sec­ondary schools at a cost of 103 mil­lion euros. “It is a good mea­sure be­cause it will in­crease the qual­ity of the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem,” the sec­re­tary stressed.

Fewer stu­dents in class

This year “there will be fewer stu­dents, more groups and more teach­ers.” The re­duc­tion in ra­tios be­gins in classes of 3 to 6 year-olds (P3): “We will go from 25 to 20 stu­dents in all schools where it can be done.” Ac­cord­ing to the de­part­ment, al­most 90% of pub­li­cally-funded schools and 30% of pri­vate sub­sidised schools will apply the mea­sure. The re­duc­tion will be main­tained in suc­ces­sive years until the en­tire pri­mary stage is com­pleted.

In­fants free

It is the first year in which the 2nd year of in­fant ed­u­ca­tion will be free in pub­lic nurs­ery schools, and there will also be sub­si­dies for fam­i­lies who send their chil­dren to pri­vate schools. The de­part­ment will fund mu­nic­i­pal nurs­eries to the tune of 1,600 euros each, while fam­i­lies with chil­dren in pri­vate nurs­eries will get 800 euros per child per year, ris­ing to 1,600 euros for chil­dren from vul­ner­a­ble fam­i­lies. The num­ber of rural nurs­ery schools will also dou­ble: 52 mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties will get a nurs­ery school for the first time.

New cur­ricu­lums

2022/23 will be the year that new cur­ricu­lums are in­tro­duced, al­though they are still in the final phase of pro­cess­ing and had not yet been ap­proved by the time the new school year started. The Sec­re­tary for Ed­u­ca­tional Trans­for­ma­tion, Núria Mora, re­cently stressed that schools al­ready have the draft cur­ricu­lum to work work, and she is con­fi­dent that these will not change much with re­spect to the final ver­sions. “The new cur­ricu­lum – which comes from the Span­ish state law on ed­u­ca­tion – states that en­force­ment is to begin with core courses this year. For the first time it is a cur­ricu­lum we have par­tic­i­pated in de­sign­ing, which makes us proud. Cat­alo­nia is the only re­gion that has par­tic­i­pated in de­sign­ing the cur­ricu­lum in terms of every­thing that has to hap­pen in a class­room,” Mora ex­plained. Schools have a lot of free­dom over how they apply the new cur­ricu­lum.

Ad­mis­sion de­cree

This will be the first year that the so-called ad­mis­sion de­cree is im­ple­mented, which pro­vides for “a bal­anced dis­tri­b­u­tion of pupils”. For the first time, places for pupils with spe­cific ed­u­ca­tional needs are re­served until school starts, “which fa­cil­i­tates an eq­ui­table dis­tri­b­u­tion of places for the more vul­ner­a­ble.” Cata­lan Ed­u­ca­tion Sec­re­tary Josep Gonzàlez-Cam­bray ex­plained that pupils will start nurs­ery, pri­mary and sec­ondary school, “with all the nec­es­sary eco­nomic re­sources as­so­ci­ated with their school­ing”: pub­li­cally-funded schools will re­ceive 384 euros per stu­dent, and sub­sidised pri­vate schools, 988.

In­clu­sive school­ing

“We want to start a change of di­rec­tion to­wards more in­clu­sive school­ing; we need to im­prove.” Gonzàlez-Cam­bray an­nounced that there will be an ex­ter­nal as­sess­ment on the sta­tus of the roll­out of the new in­clu­sive school de­cree, and that the re­sults of the eval­u­a­tion will be avail­able later this year. “One in five stu­dents has spe­cific ed­u­ca­tional needs, so we need to be able to al­lo­cate re­sources to them.”

Vo­ca­tional train­ing

“This is and will be the term of vo­ca­tional train­ing (VT); we must give it a new im­pe­tus so that VT re­sponds to the needs of the labour mar­ket,” Gon­za­lez-Cam­bray said. The chal­lenges are to in­crease places and im­prove the pre-reg­is­tra­tion and en­rol­ment pro­ce­dures. Re­gard­ing dead­lines, he stated that “the pro­ce­dures to carry out the en­tire process will be im­proved be­fore the start of the aca­d­e­mic year”.

Cli­mate emer­gency

The ed­u­ca­tion de­part­ment has sent new in­struc­tions to all schools for deal­ing with heat waves, and as­sured them that a cli­mate emer­gency plan will also be drawn up to ad­dress heat­ing in schools and allow them to pro­gres­sively adapt to the new cli­mate sit­u­a­tion.