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    <title><![CDATA[Ara in English - the CUP]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://en.ara.cat/etiquetes/the-cup/]]></link>
    <description><![CDATA[Ara in English - the CUP]]></description>
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    <ttl>10</ttl>
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      <title><![CDATA[Illa's government also stumbles with education. And behind it, the whole country stumbles.]]></title>
      <link><![CDATA[https://en.ara.cat/antoni-bassas-analysis/illa-s-government-also-stumbles-with-education-and-behind-it-the-whole-country-stumbles_8_5723358.html]]></link>
      <description><![CDATA[<p><img src="https://static1.ara.cat/clip/e25a67a2-63b7-457c-8af4-dc742c9c9ad0_16-9-aspect-ratio_default_0.jpg" /></p><p>The socialist Government of Salvador Illa is ostentatiously stumbling over education. It is not new. The republican government of Aragonès, with counselor González-Cambray at the head of the department, also stumbled over it. But in reality, and this is the most serious thing, it is the whole country, the whole society, the future of our country, that is stumbling over education.Let's go step by step. Look at this page: <a href="https://en.ara.cat/politics/salvador-illa-assumes-the-challenge-of-teachers_1_5722208.html" >Salvador Illa assumes the challenge of teachers</a>. The president defends the agreement with CCOO and UGT and without USTEC. We have a labor dispute with the teachers that in the month and a half remaining of the course will provide us with 17 days of various strikes, about five per school center. So we have a Government that is playing hardball (negotiating stance) but which has made the mistake of overestimating the importance of a pact with unions that, in education, are not the majority. This, at a time when almost half of the aspiring teachers have failed the aptitude test. <a href="https://en.ara.cat/society/almost-half-of-the-aspiring-teachers-failed-the-aptitude-test_1_5722195.html" >Only 54% of students have passed the exams to be able to take the selectivity exam and access education degrees</a>. The good part is that we have tests that filter the most capable students. The bad part is that such generally low grades say something worrying about how competent students arrive at our universities.While we are still pondering this news, we turn the page and find that the industry warns that with the current training they cannot fill 15,000 positions a year. In other words, we have jobs, but we don't have prepared people. And Catalan industry has been like this for decades. Well, it is in the midst of all this that the Government wants to incorporate Mossos into schools, in plain clothes, to help teachers with security and mediation tasks. The debate in Parliament yesterday went like this: Salvador Illa: I accept that you don't see what this is about, I accept it. If I had seen what this is about, as president, I would say let's go ahead and do it throughout Catalonia. We are saying "let's do a proof of concept". This is what we are saying. And if the centers don't want to do it, it won't be done. What fear do they have of trying it?Mònica Sales : In schools, authority is needed, yes. That of the teachers, not that of the police. They already do a good job where it matters.Jéssica Albiach: These centers do not need police officers. What they need are psychologists, social educators, integrators, to lower the ratios, for the coordinators of coexistence and well-being to have exclusive dedication and specific training, and for the Plan against Child Poverty to work. That is what they need.Pilar Castillejo : You are assuming a mental framework and a way of doing things that is not characteristic of public school, but rather of the far right.Amidst a conflict with teachers, amidst very unpromising results from aspiring teachers or students in PISA tests, and from batches of graduates facing the labor needs of the industry, <a href="https://en.ara.cat/society/high-school-in-hospitalet-the-first-center-that-asks-to-leave-the-plan-to-send-policeman-there_1_5722974.html" >the Government opens the can of worms of having Mossos in schools</a> and finds, of course, that teachers are asking for more specialists, not security personnel, no matter how much mediation they know how to do (which the Mossos do) and that it is done in other countries. It has been decades that something is not going well in the education of this country, which has to do with growing social complexity, the social valuation of the work of teachers, the constant changes in educational laws, the economic and material resources available, the unionization of their demands, the difficulty for dialogue in a world that feels unfairly criticized and is very susceptible to any external force. Finding trust and consensus to improve education is a matter of life or death for the country.Good morning.</p>]]></description>
      <dc:creator><![CDATA[Antoni Bassas]]></dc:creator>
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      <pubDate><![CDATA[Thu, 30 Apr 2026 09:39:03 +0000]]></pubDate>
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      <media:title><![CDATA[The Isla government is also struggling with education. And the entire country is suffering as a result.]]></media:title>
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      <subtitle><![CDATA[The socialist government of Salvador Illa is ostentatiously stumbling with education. It is not new. The republican government of Aragonès, with minister González-Cambray at the head of the department, also stumbled. But in reality, and this is the most serious, it is the whole country, the whole society, the future of our country, that is stumbling with education.]]></subtitle>
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      <title><![CDATA[Salvador Illa is considering banning speculative home purchases.]]></title>
      <link><![CDATA[https://en.ara.cat/politics/salvador-illa-is-considering-banning-speculative-home-purchases_1_5537121.html]]></link>
      <description><![CDATA[<p><img src="https://static1.ara.cat/clip/0663c26d-9b2e-4593-997f-211a4e0db7e5_16-9-aspect-ratio_default_0.jpg" /></p><p>The Catalan government is open to severe intervention in the housing market. Given the current crisis caused by rising rental prices and the difficulties the Catalan population is having in accessing an apartment, the president of the Generalitat (Catalan government), Salvador Illa, stated during the control session this Wednesday that the government will study the possibility of prohibiting speculative home purchases. He also stated that it would limit the number of homes per person. The anti-capitalist MP Laure Vega demanded action along these lines, and the president responded that he himself had asked the Minister of Housing, Silvia Paneque, to have the department study the matter. "I've been open to studying everything; now, studying it means studying it. We are already studying new measures like the ones you're proposing here today, and we must be certain that they are viable and effective, and if we have it, we will communicate it," Illa asserted, although government sources later emphasized that it is only a matter of studying all the proposals.</p>]]></description>
      <dc:creator><![CDATA[Roger Palós]]></dc:creator>
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      <pubDate><![CDATA[Wed, 22 Oct 2025 10:20:42 +0000]]></pubDate>
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      <media:title><![CDATA[The President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, during this Wednesday's control session.]]></media:title>
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      <subtitle><![CDATA[He assesses a report commissioned by the Barcelona Metropolitan Strategic Plan, which concludes that it could be constitutional in stressed markets.]]></subtitle>
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