Education halts studies to recover the sixth hour in public schools

BarcelonaOne of the differences between state-subsidized and public schools in Catalonia is the number of class hours students attend. Broadly speaking, if a student attends a public school, they will almost certainly attend 175 fewer hours of class than if they attend a state-subsidized school. The reason behind this inequality is the well-known sixth hour, which applies to all state-subsidized schools but is almost nonexistent in public schools, where the vast majority of students attend a five-hour school day, with the exception of highly complex schools and junior high schools. The advisability of restoring this hour to public education has been debated for years in political and educational circles, but now the government has once again kicked the can down the road.

The resulting time difference depending on whether the school is public or state-subsidized is seven school weeks between those who attend it and those who don't. For this reason, after the failure of the PISA tests, the need to restore the sixth hour in all public schools has resurfaced. With the Republican Left (ESC) leading the Generalitat, after failing the OECD tests, one of the groups that defended the need to restore the sixth hour in public education was the PSC. In fact, when Artur Mas's government eliminated the sixth hour in public education in 2011, the Parliament also urged the Convergent government to maintain the sixth hour at the PSC's proposal.

Less than a year ago, President Salvador Illa reached an agreement with the Comuns (Commons) for his investiture in which there was a commitment to gradually restore the sixth hour in public education. In her first interview as Minister of Education, Esther Niubó assured ARA that the sixth hour It was "a very important measure" that should be discussed with the entire educational community.. Also at the beginning of the course, the counselor said in an interview with More than 324 that it would comply with the agreement for the sixth hour "framing it within the general guidelines of the department."

Now, however, this agreement seems close to being a dead letter: the Department of Education has halted the study that the previous Government had commissioned from Ivalua (the Catalan Institute for the Evaluation of Public Policies) to evaluate the possibility of restoring the sixth hour in public schools. Education sources confirm to ARA that this evaluation has been halted because "other studies that were more urgent have been prioritized."

The same sources also leave up in the air the possibility of this study ending up being carried out: "We will see in the future whether the commission is resumed or not," the same sources detail. The decision comes after Niubó already cooled the possibility of complying with the agreement with the commons, both in meetings with unions as well as in an interview last October in 3Cat in which asked to "talk" about the measure with those of Jéssica Albiach.

Closing groups

This Monday it has also been published in Official Journal of the Generalitat (DOGC) that the Ministry of Education plans to withdraw the subsidy from 99 groups of state-subsidized schools next year because they do not reach the minimum number of students necessary to keep a classroom open. Although the measure can still be reversed if the schools receive new students during the summer months that allow them to reach the minimum number of students necessary, at this time the forecast is to close 51 groups of early childhood education (from I3 to I5), 40 of primary school (from 1st to 6th) and 8 in ESO.

The withdrawal of this almost one hundred concerts It is assumed that next year, the state-funded schools will lose twice as many groups as the public ones. "We see that the number of groups is increasing in the public system and decreasing in the state-funded schools, and we believe there should be a balance," Meritxell Ruiz, director of the Federation of Christian Schools (FECC), which represents more than 60% of the state-funded schools in Catalonia, told ARA.

Ruiz criticizes the fact that the closure of groups comes at a time when demand from families who want to attend state-funded schools is growing—this year there have been a thousand more applications than last year—and also warns that it has affected schools with more than 60% of vulnerable students. "Groups of centers in Nou Barris or Bon Pastor in Barcelona that do great social work are closing; schools that benefit us are being suffocated," she insisted.