Concerns and protests about cuts in education
SPAIN: The new school year begins on the wrong foot in Madrid, Galicia, Castillo-La Mancha and Navarra, the four autonomous communities in which they have announced cutbacks in education. In addition to a barrage of criticism, snips have already raised the call for mobilizations and protests.
The dictates of austerity now preys education in these four territories. Secondary teachers in Madrid are facing an increase of 18 to 20 hours per week, while the Galician passes the 21 to 25. The teaching staff will also see their schedules ranchero expanded from 18 to 20 hours in the case of secondary education and 23 to 25 primary and infant. In Navarre, secondary teachers have to work an hour a week.
With these measures, the respective regional governments hope to save millions of Euros, but at the cost of a component as sensitive as education. The reactions have been waiting and now the Socialists in Madrid have announced they will present a proposition of law to demand the withdrawal of the measures proposed in the Community, national press reports.
Unions have called a march Galicia in Santiago on September 9 and a string of strikes and stoppages that month. In Navarre, managers of public secondary schools of the Association of Directors of the Institute (ADI) shuffle resign en bloc to protest the cuts.
Meanwhile, Mar Jimenez, head of the Department of Teacher Training Institute Teacher Training, Research and Innovation (IFIIE) of the Ministry of Education, said today that any cuts in education is bad because it will harm the quality of teaching that is taught in classrooms, according to Europe Press.
Despite his claim of austerity, the EU has recently insisted that education is one of those crucial elements that do not have to put the scissors.