The charter school loses a hundred groups every year

BarcelonaIn recent years, a common question has been asked at the beginning of each school year: "How many groups—or lines—have had to be closed?" This concern makes perfect sense, since the plummeting birth rate that Catalonia has been experiencing for almost two decades has an obvious consequence: fewer and fewer students are starting school in the third grade. However, this demographic evolution has facilitated the improvement of some aspects of the education system, such as the reduction of ratios in preschool and primary school.not in high schools, where many classrooms have more than 25 students–, the reduction in student numbers is also causing school closures in Catalonia, especially among state-subsidized schools.

To give an idea of how much the situation has changed, 54,217 babies were born in Catalonia in 2023. This is 30,000 fewer children than fifteen years ago, when the country was breaking birth records; almost 20,000 fewer than a decade ago, and 4,000 fewer than in 2020, the year of the pandemic. However, it should also be noted that in 2023, the Idescat (National Institute of Social Welfare) registered around 15,000 Catalans born abroad under the age of 14; more than there were in Catalonia in 2019.

Be that as it may, news of school closures and complaints about the elimination of lines in schools and institutes have been recurrent lately. And, according to data from the Department of Education itself, the reduction in class sizes has had a very uneven impact depending on the school's ownership. State-funded schools have been the main victims of the demographic decline.

If we look at compulsory education (from 13 to 4th year of compulsory secondary education), in the last four academic years, state-funded schools have lost a total of 464 classes. In the same period, public schools have gained 53. However, this difference has not been linear, as there have been academic years, such as in 2020-2021, in which state-funded schools gained around 250 classes, and others, such as in 2023-2024, in which public schools lost around forty.

The fact that the demographic decline has had a clearer impact on private schools than on public schools was also recently acknowledged by Minister Esther Niubó in an appearance before the Parliament. In response to a question from the Commons, she argued that between the 2009-2010 academic year and the current one, "the number of public schools has grown to 31, while the number of private schools has decreased to 38."

One of the many private schools that has seen the loss of public school subsidies for some lines is La Salle Comtal in Barcelona. The director, Ernest Casaponsa, explains that they only have two lines, but in 2023 they saw that they weren't meeting the minimum requirements and had to close one of the I3 groups. They had already encountered this situation in 2021. Losing the subsidy means that, for that generation, they will have to wait until they complete the first year of primary school to see if there are enough students to recover it. Furthermore, Casaponsa criticizes that, for practical purposes, losing a school's funding means "laying off a teacher." "If we lose a school, we lose a teacher, and the emotional impact on the students and the stress this generates is very, very significant. It's very noticeable," he laments.

In the case of La Salle Comtal, they have been able to recover some funding thanks to the fact that, with the Pact against School Segregation, the Education Consortium initiated a shock plan with educational backpacks that allows vulnerable students to attend a state-subsidized school without assuming the cost of fees. Furthermore, they receive a large number of students who enroll live—who arrive at the school after the school year has already begun. For this reason, Casaponsa insists on the need for families to be able to access state-subsidized schools free of charge, as is the case with some state-subsidized hospitals in the Catalan education system.

This is also being requested by Escuela la Esperanza, a single-line school that, despite having 54% vulnerable students, has seen how in recent years it lost the support of one of its groups. However, in this case, by being part of a foundation with other schools, it has been able to cover the cost of this support. "We are making an effort to maintain this group even though we don't reach the minimum ratio because many of the children have siblings at the center. If we closed a generation, we would force families to send their children to different schools," explains the director, Rosa Torres.

Interest in concerted education is growing

Despite the significant loss of classes from private schools in recent years, interest in this type of education has grown considerably in the Catalan education system this year. In pre-registrations for the 2024-2025 school year, applications to attend private schools increased slightly compared to the previous year, while applications to attend public schools fell.

Specifically, between 13th and 1st year of ESO (the two stages of the educational stage in which pre-registrations are made to schools and institutes), 24,530 assignments were made to private schools, 1,335 more than last year. In contrast, public schools, despite accumulating up to 86,803 assignments, saw how this figure represented an intake of 2,014 fewer students than in the 2023-2024 school year.