If you think about a typical classroom in a school or high school, it's easy to imagine rows and rows of desks. In front, very close to the blackboard, a larger table for the teacher. An image with which they want to break the pedagogical model of the Barcelona Education Consortium under the premise that spaces are also tools that contribute to improving education. The distribution of classes in a more diaphanous way, the use of colors on the walls or the air conditioning of the classrooms are thus established as essential points for offering quality learning.

The administration and the Parents' Association of the Joan Brossa Institute, in the Baix Guinardó neighborhood of Barcelona, ​​have denounced the poor condition of the school's facilities, which have been accumulating problems in recent years. The trigger for the protest was the sewage flood the school suffered at the beginning of the month, which has left the school without water for two weeks and without access to the restrooms. "It's a very critical situation because we have no hygiene," says Cesc Trillo, a teacher and spokesperson for the faculty, who adds that portable toilets have had to be installed in the schoolyard. The problem first became noticeable on March 4 when some teachers detected a water leak in the basement. "In a matter of minutes, we had a foot of water flooding the entire entrance of the building," explains the spokesperson. Coinciding with the heavy rains of early March, the situation repeated itself the following day, this time with flooding from the courtyard drains that forced the evacuation of the building for safety and health reasons.

"Whenever there are meetings between school principals and the administration, the script is set by the [Education] Consortium, and we want to change it." That's how the principal of the Estel school in Barcelona, ​​Marta Rubio, is direct when explaining why more than 100 school principals from public schools and institutes in the Catalan capital will meet this Thursday. "We want to talk to each other without intermediaries because, otherwise, when we meet formally, we always end up talking about the issues raised by the Consortium and which seek very specific objectives," Rubio insists.

In Catalonia, the early school leaving rate is 13.7% (students who drop out before turning 18). Although there is a significant socioeconomic motivation, many of the reasons that lead adolescents to leave school earlier than they would like are hidden behind seemingly insignificant daily practices. This is indicated by the study. Evaluation of measures to ensure the continuity of studies until the age of 18, An analysis that the Barcelona Education Consortium commissioned from the consulting firm KSNET to determine which of the actions being carried out in vulnerable schools in the Catalan capital are most effective in combating early school leaving.

The new 2021-2022 academic year will bring novelties to Barcelona's secondary school. One of the most important is that the vast majority of schools (93.5%) will recover their school canteen service. As the majority of secondary school students don't get a lunch break -classes finish at around 3 p.m., in time for lunch-, some of them have stopped offering canteen services or offered it only to some students. The service will now be redeployed in all centres to encourage students to stay in the afternoons to do school work or extracurricular activities. This measure, according to the Minister of Education and president of the Consortium of Education, Josep Gonzàlez-Cambray, improves "equal opportunities" for students. "If there is no dining room they do not have access to grants for school meals", he has warned. In fact, the Consortium will also expand this grant, which will go from being two days a week to cover all school days. Until now, only students from the most disadvantaged schools were offered grants for five days a week. In addition to the canteen allowance (€4.43 a day or €6.33 a day, depending on vulnerability), an extra €5 a day will be granted for the assistants for pupils who cannot eat alone.