How is it decided whether a student receives educational support or financial aid?

BarcelonaOne in three students needs educational support. This was the main headline at the start of the school year. A striking statement that highlights one of the greatest challenges facing Catalan schools, but one that must also be broken down in order to address them. What exactly does it mean that a student needs educational support?

According to the latest data published by the Department of Education, there are at least 335,000 students in the Catalan education system with specific educational support needs (SESE) between the first and fourth years of secondary school. However, within this category, a distinction must be made between two groups with very different proportions and needs.

On the one hand, there are SES A, who are children and adolescents who need support because they suffer from a physical, intellectual, or sensory disability, or from autism spectrum disorders (ASD) or behavioral disorders. These students depend on the controversial inclusive school decree, which, despite having been approved eight years ago, is still far from achieving its objective – that all students can attend mainstream schools regardless of their situation. especially due to the lack of resources that professionals have been complaining about for some time now. However, it must be taken into account that these students (43,366) represent only 13% of the total number of students that the Department of Education has identified as needing educational support.

Who are the remaining 87%? The NESE B. "They are mostly students at risk of poverty," warns Maria Segurola, an expert in school segregation and public policy data analysis at the Bofill Foundation. The reasons for being classified as NESE B (292,380 students are) are diverse and are also stipulated by law: suffering from poverty or being at risk of suffering from it, lacking sociocultural resources in the family, being a recent arrival in Catalonia, having entered the education system late due to lack of linguistic competence, or being at risk of dropping out of school.

"All of this data should be taken with caution, since the same student can be NESE A and NESE B at the same time. Furthermore, within the same category, there are again differences," Segurola insists. In this sense, according to Bofill's analysis, up to 36% of Catalan schools have special educational support needs and 29% are at risk of poverty.

How are they detected?

The process for detecting whether a student needs educational support has two avenues: administrative, which depends primarily on the admission decree approved in 2021, and personal, based primarily on observations by teachers and families and analysis by the EAPs, the psychopedagogical counseling and guidance teams that support schools.

The first avenue serves primarily to identify families in disadvantaged situations. When a student pre-registers for school, if their family considers them to be NESE B, they can state this in the application. If they do not, the administration—specifically the detection units formed by the Education Inspectorate, City Council, Education, and Social Services—also analyzes whether the family has socioeconomic or sociocultural problems. Furthermore, if the student arrives for live enrollment (with the course started as 9,000 new students do every month) or your situation has not been detected before and teachers see signs, the EAP will assess your case and prepare a report detailing your circumstances.

Does everyone have help?

However, the fact that a student is considered NESE does not directly imply that they receive financial support or assistance. In fact, given that the NESE B category includes both students at risk of poverty and students with sociocultural difficulties, it is often concluded that all newly arrived students receive financial support, but the process is not automatic.

After being categorized as NESE, the psychopedagogical counseling teams prepare a report indicating what support actions the students need. For example, to receive the school backpack –The financial support sent to schools to cover all student expenses, such as field trips, summer camps, gowns, or uniforms, the EAP social worker will need to indicate that the student needs this resource based on data such as whether their family benefits from guaranteed income or 24-month aid, or if they have been in developing countries for less than two years, among others.

However, if a language or integration problem is detected, the EAP educator or speech therapist may request that the student access a reception classroom or receive the support of a night watchman if they have a physical disability or intellectual disorder. Furthermore, the same student may need more than one type of support.

Is it a good system?

Both Segurola and the director of the AFACC (the association that represents the majority of AFAs in Catalonia), Lidón Gasull, highly value the increase in vulnerability detection in the Catalan system. In fact, some communities are using it as a reference, such as the Basque Country. "It's a policy with capital letters that has been implemented with great courage and is very countercultural, but it still has shortcomings," admits the expert in school segregation.

Gasull agrees that "the system is willing to detect vulnerable students and help them, but the process is opaque." In fact, the director of the AFFAC admits that within schools this opacity ends up stigmatizing some families: "Instead of creating structural measures that guarantee free schooling for all, students end up being labeled as... students backpack and confrontations between families are encouraged due to lack of information." Gasull insists that Catalan schools have a problem of child poverty that must be addressed.

Finally, Segurola puts two more negative points on the table. On the one hand, the amount of the school backpack This is below the actual cost of educational expenditures—public schools currently receive €384 per student, compared to the initial forecast of €641, and the calculation of these expenses is based on 2019 figures. Furthermore, the expert on school segregation warns that there are students who, due to their current year, still do not receive a school backpack despite needing one. "Resources have been expanded since the 2022/23 school year, when this system was first implemented, but the measure still does not reach students in years 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 of primary school," the expert laments.