"They don't trust us": school principals will only be able to choose teachers in very specific cases

BarcelonaThis Monday the Catalan government reached an agreement with the CCOO and UGT unions, but without Ustec —the largest union— a series of improvements in teachers' working conditions and the situation in classroomsHowever, the agreement also included a section where unions secured a measure they had been pursuing for years, one that worries many school principals: the government has committed to reducing the number of "profiled" positions—vacations reserved for teachers selected based on their profile rather than through interviews—to just 3%. This reduction will now be limited to positions related to inclusive education. "This is very serious because what they are doing is questioning the autonomy of schools and the capacity for effective leadership of educational institutions and their administrations," warns Jordi Satorra, president of AXIA (Professional Association of Educational Leaders) and principal of the Antoni Martí i Franquès Institute in Tarragona. In fact, in a statement, the association of school leaders asserts that the decision "undermines school leadership and renders profiled positions meaningless."

In practical terms, this measure, which the Department of Education wants to implement in the 2027-2028 academic year, means that 4,500 of the 7,000 specialized teaching positions currently available in the Catalan education system will be lost—representing 7% of the total, even though the Catalan Education Law (LEC) mandates specialized positions. Furthermore, the agreement also stipulates the elimination of specializations in digital competence, methodologies with a globalized approach, and visual and plastic arts education.

This change represents a reversal by the Government, since at the beginning of the year He proposed expanding the designated places in accordance with the educational projects of the schools.The news was made public this Monday with the agreement reached with the unions, but the decision to reduce the scope of schools' ability to conduct interviews and select teachers had already been published a week earlier, on March 3, in the form of a resolution. In the last two academic years, the option of conducting interviews to select teachers—a power that directors of private schools do have to create their teams—and of creating new positions, designed to address the influx of teachers who had to fill vacancies after the selection processes, had already been frozen. However, the association of school principals, which includes more than 300 professionals, sees the new resolution and the agreement with the unions as a "clear change of course" by the Department of Education. "Everything we gained with the Education Law, the autonomy projects, the decree on school leadership, the decree on staffing... they have begun to dismantle it," says Satorra. "With this decision, they are simply buying into the unions' mindset and telling us they don't trust us," insists the Tarragona principal.

In the same vein, Marta Rubio, director of the La Estrella School in Barcelona and member of the new assembly of school principals in the city of BarcelonaRubio asserts that the measure "is pitting principals against teachers" and warns that all they are asking for is "a degree of autonomy for each school to be able to support its projects." "We feel like we're being treated as if we've committed malfeasance," Rubio complains. He explains that in his case, being a single-stream school, the reduction in specialized teaching positions would mean he could only have one specialized position in a staff of 21 teachers.

Appeal against the decision

Faced with this scenario, the school principals' association AXIA asserts that it will file an appeal against the resolution that establishes the drastic reduction of interviews for the upcoming school year. "If they rule that we are wrong, we will file an administrative lawsuit, because that seems to be the only language they understand," warns the association's president. Sources from the Department of Education maintain that, within the framework of negotiations with the unions, the Government "has sought a balance between the autonomy of school principals and the necessary transparency of the process." In this regard, they assert that "it was considered necessary to safeguard the interview procedure, but only for positions with particular complexity in student support." They add: "Conversely, it has been agreed that the specialized positions, and even more so within the framework of the ongoing review, must correspond to very specific situations and only specifically trained personnel should be eligible to apply, but not to the point of subjecting them to an interview process."

Contrary to the OECD's criteria

Beyond the legal recourse, several principals, AXIA, and also the director of the Barcelona Center for Educational Leadership (LID), Anna Jolonch, warn that giving less decision-making power to school principals goes against the recommendations of UNESCO and the OECD. "It makes no sense that if the Catalan government asks the OECD for advice on education issues, it doesn't consider that the organization emphasizes the importance of principals being able to participate in teacher hiring," criticizes Satorra. In fact, the report Improving School Leadership The OECD insists that "The ability of school leaders to select their teaching staff is fundamental to their capacity to establish a school culture and capacity that lead to better student achievement.

In this sense, Jolonch warns that school leadership is "the backbone of the system." She also criticizes "the governance model of public schools." "Educational projects are in the hands of the management teams in the schools, but they must have decision-making power and autonomy to create cohesive teams," concludes the director of LID.