Public education, without excuses

Next week, schools and high schools will reopen their doors. Thousands of children and adolescents will reunite with their classmates, meet the education professionals who will accompany them every day, and resume a routine that is much more than going to class: it is learning, growing, socializing, and finding a space of protection and opportunities.And like every year, we return to talk about the cost of materials, whether there will be enough teaching staff, the available public places, the school canteen, and the conditions of the educational centers. This year, in addition, we are talking about mobilizations. And also about what will happen with the field trips that many centers will stop doing.But it is not enough to take inventory of shortcomings every month of September. It is necessary to ask oneself what Catalan public education really needs. The problems that we will face again this September are not new, they are not unforeseen, and they are not solved with patches. They are the result of political decisions accumulated year after year.Public education does not need gestures. It needs a clear, sustained, and honest political commitment. And this commitment begins with how we plan the educational offer. It is necessary to guarantee a sufficient public network in each territory, for all children and adolescents, and to strengthen it instead of weakening it. Year after year, groups are closed in public schools, and, paradoxically, educational grants that do not respond to the country's real educational needs are maintained, or even expanded.And it also involves a matter that can no longer be postponed: the free nature of public education. It is not normal, nor has it ever been, for families to have to bear costs linked to schooling. Every euro that a family pays to educate their son or daughter in the public system is one more inequality that the system tolerates. Access to quality public education cannot depend on the income of each household.This issue goes beyond the expenses strictly linked to what happens inside the classroom. Let us think, for example, about the school canteen, which should be free and universal and form part of an educational policy that guarantees equity; or about the outings and activities that schools incorporate into their educational project, and which currently can depend on financial contributions from families or on the availability of professionals to make them possible depending on the school.

We have been talking about inclusive education for years. But for it to be a reality, schools must have the conditions so that all students can learn and participate. Co-teaching is a tool that can make this possible: two professionals working together in the classroom to respond to the diversity of the students without separating the children who need more support.Each longer and hotter summer reminds us that many centers are not prepared to cope with high temperatures, with classrooms lacking adequate air conditioning and playgrounds without shade. Sustained investments are needed to guarantee adequate and safe spaces for children and professionals.The public education we need cannot be decided behind the backs of the educational community. Families, children and adolescents, and professionals cannot just be recipients of policies decided from above. It is necessary that we be heard, that our experience be incorporated, and that we be made participants in the decisions that define the future of the system.From aFFaC - Federated Associations of Families of Students of Catalonia we are clear about it: Catalonia needs to open, now, a new stage of collective construction around public education, promoted and led by the entire educational community. A stage that addresses gratuity, planning, inclusion, working conditions, and real participation. This is our proposal for an Agreement for Public Education: to break, once and for all, the logic of reacting every September to the same problems, and to start building commitments that can be demanded and evaluated.And this is where the Department of Education has a responsibility that it cannot delegate or ignore. This September, we are not asking it to manage the school year. We demand that it assume the responsibility that corresponds to it: to guarantee the right to a public, inclusive, equitable, and quality education.A strong public education is not built year after year with patches or with empty words. It is built with brave decisions, sufficient resources, and an unequivocal political commitment. And this academic year, the department must demonstrate with decisions and resources that public education is an urgent political priority.