A decade ago, inclusion in the classroom was an aspiration. Today, it's the measure of an education system's quality. Catalonia begins the 2025-2026 academic year with 1,326,352 students, according to sources from the Department of Education and Vocational Training. Despite the overall decline in enrollment, the number of students requiring specific support has increased: 335,746 from preschool (E3) to the fourth year of secondary school (ESO), almost 9,000 more than the previous year. Of these, 43,366 are students with special educational needs (SEN-A) – students with developmental disorders or disabilities – and within this group, autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is one of the fastest-growing profiles.

The government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso has avoided providing figures on the participation in the strike that began this Wednesday at Madrid's public universities to protest the underfunding that is "suffocating" higher education. While the Madrid government has tried to downplay the protest, claiming that it is "politicized" and "has no justification whatsoever," the organizers of the strike say that participation has ranged between 50% and 90%, depending on the campus. The student platforms of Madrid's six public universities (Complutense, Rey Juan Carlos, Carlos III, Autonomous University of Madrid, Polytechnic University, and University of Alcalá de Henares) called the strike, which will continue until tomorrow, with the support of the unions CCOO, UGT, CGT, and CNT. The protest is in response to the budget proposal put forward by the government of the Community of Madrid.which will increase funding for public universities by 6.5%. Student groups consider this insufficient because, according to their calculations, the budget for public higher education will only increase from 0.44% of the regional GDP to 0.46%, and they believe that anything less than approaching 1% is inadequate. Conversely, the executive branch previously argued that the education budget represents more than 4% of the entire budget of the Community of Madrid.

Just a few steps separate the Les Vinyes School Institute from the Castellbisbal cemetery. That's why, when they showed the cemetery in class as part of the Forgotten Memory project, where they delve into the Civil War and the repression, they were so impressed. map of gravesSome students jumped out of their chairs. "We saw that we had one right next to us. At first, I thought we were standing on top of it; it was shocking, and we went to the cemetery," says Estel, a student from Les Vinyes. "It's awful that we had it so close and didn't know anything," she adds. In the cemetery of this town in the Vallès Occidental region, there are two mass graves, one with the remains of three soldiers and another with twelve, and only the name of one of the Republican soldiers buried there is known. The men who were buried there died while trying, unsuccessfully, to stop the Francoist offensive of January 25, 1939. No signage commemorates them. The 3rd and 4th year ESO students at this school haven't just learned about the mass grave and its history. From the school, they have begun a real detective operation to find out more and have launched a campaign to have the grave exhumed. Part of the investigation led them to the family of one of the soldiers buried there, and this Friday, the son-in-law and two of the grandchildren of soldier Joan Torruella brought flowers to the cemetery in a very moving ceremony with the students. "We didn't just want to fulfill the school project and do enough. We wanted to do much more because it's so important," says Celia. "This should have been done as a country. I think it's terrible that it hasn't been done until now," explains Bruna. "Families have the right to know where they can bring flowers and where they can go to talk to their dead; they have right to exhume relatives "To give them a proper burial," Rayan says.

VA was a physical education teacher at Les Corts Secondary School for less than three months, at the beginning of the 2020-2021 school year. During that time period, the comments and groping that have led to complaints from nine students are believed to have occurred. All were in the first year of compulsory secondary school except for one, who was in the third year. The case is being tried this week in the Barcelona Court of Appeals, and the man faces a request for 45 years in prison from the Prosecutor's Office for continuous sexual abuse of minors. He, however, has completely exonerated himself with a statement full of the words "never," "false," and "absolutely false."

"How can social media connect us, if using a cell phone at the table is rude?" asks a girl, as if it were a hand-to-hand battle between gladiators and she'd just disarmed her opponent, who, eager to buy time to devise a counterattack, responds with a simple but effective: "How?"

The issue of psychotropic drug use, particularly among adolescents and young people, is causing concern. This is confirmed by the latest studies, which have been echoed by the ARA, which indicate that "in 2023, the last with definitive government data, more than 1.2 million Catalans received at least one dispensation of antidepressants." Prescriptions among those under fifteen years of age have tripled since 2020. The news also says that these drugs, "roughly speaking

The university entrance exams in Catalonia remain unchanged. The Catalan Ministry of Research and Universities assures that it fully fulfills th precautionary measures of the TSJC, that obliges them to offer the exams in the three co-official languages. Therefore, it has stated that there will not be more changes than that of "reinforcing the communication" to inform on the range of languages avaliable. Beyond this, the test by default will continue to be in Catalan, as the "vehicular language" of the school system. This has been has defended by the Catalan minister Gemma Geis, who in an emergency appearance criticized the "interferences" of justice that attacked the "consensus of the country" in the university and linguistic model. "This exam cannot be touched", she proclaimed.