A hundred schools are at risk of closing due to the drop in birth rates

BarcelonaIn the last fifteen years, the birth rate in Catalonia has fallen by 37%. Next year, for the first time, this drop in births will affect all educational years, from I3 to 4th year of ESO. This situation forces the Department of Education to decide: either reduce the ratios – with the consequent need for more spaces and professionals – or close lines in schools and institutes that see how the classrooms are becoming increasingly empty. "School planning is what can end up making your child end up in a middle-class ghetto," said the director of the Bofill Foundation, Ismael Palacín, on Tuesday.

The entity warns of a worrying situation: in Catalonia there are 116 centres, between schools and institutes, that are at risk of closing because they have only one line, and in I3 and 1st of ESO (the courses in which the educational stages begin) they have 25% of the places empty. According to a report made public this Tuesday by Bofill, the great majority of centres that are at risk are schools (111) and only five are institutes. In addition, half of those hundred centres are segregated. "It is normal that if they see that they will have to close, they ask that the students with live registration - who in general tend to be vulnerable students - be sent to them in order to keep the classrooms open," laments the author of the study, Maria Segurola.

Regarding the ownership of the affected centres, 63 are subsidised and 57 are public. The Foundation claims that this situation is due to poor planning by the Department of Education, which has made decisions without taking into account the demographic evolution of Catalonia. The country has suffered a significant drop in births, despite the constant arrival of foreign students.

As the study points out, all this means that at the moment more than half (58%) of the schools in Catalonia have only one line of I3. This has a direct effect on competition between schools and the resulting school segregation. "It may seem like a technical issue, but school planning is a political bet," Segurola insisted. The expert in school segregation has put on the table the fact that demographic changes will always affect schools. "The question is whether they will serve to enlarge the problems or to address pending challenges," she said.

The dance of figures of the public and the private

Statistically, the centres of one and other ownership are affected by the drop in birth rates in different ways. While the public school has seen how in the last three years, according to the data of Education, it lost about seventy I3 groups, during this period the private school has barely lost any. However, if we take into account not only the data from the beginning of the stage but from the whole second cycle of infant education (from I3 to I5), the one that has been most affected in terms of the closure of groups and also of centres is the private school, which has lost almost a hundred groups. On the other hand, the public school as a whole has gained about seventy.

To understand this dance of figures, several factors must be taken into account. One is that, at this time, Catalonia has a concert decree dating back to 1993, which means that the group of schools and institutes in the concerted network includes from the most elitist – where almost all the students are from the well-off class – to the most inclusive – where the majority of students are socioeconomically vulnerable and are part of the shock plan for newly arrived students. This means that administratively the schools that participate in the fight against school segregation are treated equally and those that do not. Therefore, it also means that there are concerted centres that suffer a lack of students and a stigmatisation similar to that suffered by other vulnerable public centres.

On the other hand, the educational offer of the public and the concerted during pre-registration works differently. While the concerted comes out with the maximum number of places and then they reduce them depending on whether they have been filled or not, in the public the opposite is done: fewer vacancies are offered and if after pre-registration it is seen that there are not enough places, they are added. All of this makes the management of places to avoid segregation and at the same time allow families to choose the center where they want to send their children even more complicated.

Unplanned planning

Bofill insists that Education must come up with a plan so that the planning of places is not unexpected every year. "We look at the data from the register and we don't look at it again until the following year, something that makes it impossible for there to be organisational changes," laments Segurola. That is why they urge the department to make a plan to reorganise the places in each centre, which includes a control of the offer also in the subsidised centres and the possibility of merging schools or institutes with few students. "Having fewer students can be bad news if it is not planned well, but it can be very good news considering that we will have the same money for 30% fewer students. We can use it to improve ratios, extend the canteen service or lengthen compulsory education," Palacín explained.

One in three institutes, above the official ratio

On the other side of the scale of poor planning of educational places is the situation of the high schools. According to Bofill, the combination of the demographic boom of 2008 and the increase in arrivals of newly arrived students halfway through the course meant that in the 2022-2023 academic year, one in three high schools offering 4th year of ESO (27%) had a group above the official ratio. "This situation is due to the lack of a plan to attend to the students of the demographic boom who arrived at secondary school, as well as the new additions who arrived from abroad, already announced in the official forecasts," the study states.

Beyond the overcrowding of classrooms, Bofill warns that the overratio in secondary schools is preventing the administration from having room to evenly distribute the students who arrive halfway through the course. This means that they are only assigned to centres where there is a vacancy, without taking into account the degree of complexity of the centre or the specific needs of this student.