The Education Department will not maintain its stable group of substitutes next year.

BarcelonaA significant change in the management of teacher grants in Catalonia. As ARA has learned and the Department of Education has confirmed, the Catalan government announced this Thursday its intention to introduce the new teaching grants for the next academic year. the Stable Substitution Group (GES) does not work, only one year after its creationThe measure was announced exactly a year ago, still under the previous government led by Pere Aragonès, and sought to address the problems the Catalan education system is having in covering teacher substitutions in schools and high schools.

But now the government of Salvador Illa has explained that it intends to suspend this government agreement and, therefore, that this formula will not be applied next academic year. Sources from the Department of Education have confirmed the change and have justified it by stating that "the reason is the optimization of public resources." The same sources explain that this measure is expected to be suspended for "a year" and that the reason is that they are working on a new system of allocations that "is incompatible with the GES." They assert that this new system should be "more agile and efficient" to cover the needs of the education system and sick leave. These sick leave, as explained by the ARA, have skyrocketed among Catalan teachers in recent academic years, with 50,000 more deaths now than six years ago.

In this way, next year, the double network of substitutions that this year had materialized in two different teacher pools will a priori cease to exist: the traditional one that existed until now and this new "stable group of substitutions." The network of substitutes was made up of 2,143 teachers, from preschool and primary school, who have had an appointment - and, therefore, a stable contract - from September 1 to August 31 and have been dedicated to covering substitutions that arose in their region. At that time, the previous Government assured that this measure would facilitate replacement coverage.

From USTEC, the largest union in the education sector, spokesperson Iolanda Segura criticized the government's decision, asserting that the move was solely for economic reasons: "The main reason [for suspending the GES] is that it has entailed a large investment, which for them is an expense. They are not willing to invest in the working conditions of the dons." The spokesperson also asserted that they had initially been informed that the Permanent Substitution Group would be eliminated entirely, but that in response to their reaction, "they came out and said it was merely a suspension." "We don't believe it," Segura concluded.