Recovering the best school in Catalonia is possible

Look: today, as everyone knows, the school year was supposed to start, and it has not started due to the teachers' strike. Just as they ended the last school year, groups of teachers have cut off traffic on the Barcelona ring roads first thing in the morning. With the difference that today was a very special day for the students, the first day of school. The one in which there is anxiety, excitement, nerves, emotions, expectations… That is why I think that, regardless of how we have arrived here, a country that begins the school year with a teachers' strike is a country that has hit rock bottom. Denying the first day of excitement at school may be a preparation for the disappointments that will come with adult life, but it is a failure for everyone, that is already understood.It is a failure for everyone, with shared responsibilities. There are foresight problems: if Catalonia goes from 6 to more than 8 million inhabitants in 25 years, the school system must be sized accordingly. If the school is to be inclusive, that is, to cater to students with special needs, more hands are needed. If it is to be in Catalan, it must be taken into account that today we are a multilingual country, which makes immersion difficult. If it is also desired, logically, that students leave school knowing how to read, write, calculate, reason, and speak well, then teachers must be excellent and, therefore, one must be demanding in access to the teaching profession. And teachers must be paid well. There is a problem of political authority. The mess of the PISA tests and these two wasted months of summer holidays have shown that there is a functional problem in the Department of Education. All the ministers have had problems with the unions, but now we have gone from the unrest of the Cambray era to that of the Niubó era, as if they did not master the teaching civil service and did not understand the effects of the decisions they make, such as agreeing to that reduction of the power of school principals, and doing so with minority unions in the sector. The unions cannot give many lessons either. The USTEC approved an agreement with the Department of Education last May and asked for a vote in favor of the pact, but the majority of teachers voted against it. The result is a Government without authority and unions whose representativeness has been damaged. But, look, on a morning like this, taking an inventory of responsibilities is not enough. We must be able to break this negative vicious circle. And we must break it by affirming that we can do it. Catalonia has a very long pedagogical tradition. The department has resources (they are never enough, but they are not few, and it is promised that there will be more). The first ones who would not want to strike are the teachers. And in Catalonia, the school is under Spanish judicial and political attack. If there are so many of us who want to get out of this, we must be able to get out of it. And making a great country agreement for education, thinking about the students and the future of the country, is increasingly necessary.Look, today the results of the PISA tests have been published, from which Catalonia has been excluded because the sample was not valid. Well then, Spain as a whole obtains the worst results in its history. For example, the Spanish results in reading have plummeted.If we apply the results of Catalonia, with this invalid sample that was apparently better designed to produce better results, we find that the Catalan results remain below those of Madrid –which heads the state ranking with 477 points– and surpass Castile and León (472) by only two points and Cantabria (470) by four. Catalonia also remains ahead of the Spanish average (457) and of the European Union and the OECD (both with 463 points). Even so, this unreal Catalonia would still be very far from the international top 5, which ranges from 488 points in the United Kingdom to 525 in Japan. A first day of school without classes must call us to a commitment so that it never happens again. We must be able to do it, shaking off selfish and defeatist approaches. Good morning.