Esther Niubó: "With the agreement, it is understood that strikes cease to make sense"

BarcelonaThe Minister of Education and Professional Training, Esther Niubó, speaks to ARA a few hours after the signing of the pre-agreement between her department and the majority unions in the sector after eight negotiation meetings.

Is she satisfied?

— I am very satisfied. Tired, but very satisfied, because I think we have taken a very important step forward and that the signing of this agreement represents a turning point. For many years, the educational community, and specifically teachers in Catalonia, have not had much recognition. And, furthermore, we are laying the groundwork for the educational improvement that we believe we must focus on in the coming years and the next decade.

One of the key points of the negotiations and this agreement has been in salary matters. How much will Catalan teachers earn now?

— Approximately 440 euros more from the autonomous part plus everything that had already been agreed with the State. In the part of the salary scale that the autonomous community sets, we must add the [30%] increase in the specific bonus that we signed in the March agreement with CCOO and UGT, and now we are adding a new bonus, the educational improvement bonus. In this way, we will find Catalan teachers among the best paid in the entire State.

Initially, the Government offered a singular supplement linked to assuming tutorships or for teachers in high-complexity centers. Where does this option remain, now that there is a bonus for everyone, regardless of their task?

— The truth is that they were different approaches, even in terms of model. We are convinced that the education system certainly requires more incentives, and therefore to be able to better reward those responsibilities such as tutoring or co-tutoring or those teachers who work in centers of maximum complexity. It seemed to us that it could be an incentive system, and therefore, in some way, to reward or recognize this more complex task. From there, it is true that the approach of most trade union organizations was different: to seek a linear supplement that would affect all education professionals, and the decision was precisely to generate this consensus for the other system. However, effectively, I think that the teaching career has room for improvement from the point of view of being able to incentivize positions that require significant effort.

Do you think teachers were paid little until now?

— It is true that, at first glance, one might think that they did not have a bad remuneration situation, but when we started to do comparative analyses with the rest of the autonomous communities and, above all, taking into account that in the last 25 years no kind of increase had been made in this specific complement, it seemed reasonable to us [to increase salaries] and that it was a deserved recognition. We have years of difficulties in the educational field, marked by underfunding and by the increase in complexity. We always talk about the need to enhance the educational system, and we cannot have a prestigious educational system if we do not have well-recognized teachers.

Another of the key points of the agreement is the more than 6,000 allocations in inclusive schools over four years. How will we notice this in the classrooms?

— This I would say is almost the most important and most structural bet of the agreement. This ultimately means specialist professionals, support professionals, who alongside teachers have to help address the complexity we have in our classrooms. Boys and girls who need more individualized follow-up, more intensive support, and this, therefore, means social educators, social integrators, psychopedagogues, counselors. Also special education specialists when we think about high schools. They are important figures to better accompany this student body and, on the other hand, to be more alongside teachers and support them.

The Secondary Teachers union, which has also signed the pre-agreement, has openly shown itself to be contrary to inclusive schooling.

— At this point I absolutely disagree with this union. What quality public education would we be defending if it is not inclusive education? What we would be defending is a segregating education that we cannot share in any way.

The entire preliminary agreement amounts to an investment of 720 million euros that just a week ago were impossible. Where do they come from?

— We have the first agreement from March, which already foresaw an increase in resources of around 2 billion euros over four years and which has meant a 25% increase in the Education budget. Furthermore, the new budgetary context has also allowed us to take a step forward. The allocations in the budgetary field are dynamic and, therefore, we are flexible here, and what we have to do is a multi-year rollout of these planned resources because, obviously, we have also worked on this hand in hand with the Ministry of Economy. This agreement will obviously become a reality.

This pre-agreement of 720 million has been reached, but on Friday, when leaving the meeting, the unions said they had not yet decided whether to call off the strikes. Did the Government not suggest that one thing was linked to the other?

— In reality, this was not discussed because it is taken for granted that if an agreement is reached in the sectoral table, the call for strikes becomes meaningless. It is true that we must respect the rhythms of the different organizations. In this case, it is USTEC that must submit this preliminary agreement to a consultation with its bases, it is their decision-making system. From here, we trust that this consultation will be ratified, because it is a very good agreement, and that the strikes can be called off.

Have they considered what scenario would open up if the consultation resulted in a 'no'?

— I am convinced that teachers and all those who can participate in this consultation know very well what is being voted on, what is being decided, what is at stake, and what could be lost.

On Thursday, the unions decided to lock themselves in the department and demand that you go there. You were talking to them for a very short time. What did you say to them?

— There was really little to say here, because my team, especially led by the Secretary of Educational Improvement, had explained everything all day and had said that it was the definitive offer. Everything had been explained and everything had been worked on. I went down and told them to reflect. It was one of the moments of tension, because at that moment it seemed that this proposal did not quite fit or was not sufficient, but we were really in an almost limit negotiating framework. We asked for the reconsideration of the organizations and that they be aware of what we had within reach, in our hands. It is true that at that moment there was a point of tension, but we also needed to gain a little time so that everyone could make this reflection and see each other the next day.

The unions reproached him greatly that on Thursday, before the negotiation, you went out to say that the proposal they presented was the definitive one. Was it a mistake?

— We had to set a framework. It is true that every day that passed, new claims, new demands were being added... We are approaching the end of the course and it was necessary to put a final point to this conflict. Our intention from the outset was to reach a necessary agreement. We needed an end, because otherwise we would probably still be here, and if we set out to describe or point out all the deficits or shortcomings we have, we would never finish. We need to be aware of what we can gain at this time.

Within the framework of this cycle of mobilizations, many teachers have taken to the streets to demand improvements. Do you think the requests made by the unions coincide with what is being asked for inside the classroom?

— I think that finally yes, because the claim I felt most strongly was the need to provide professionals to strengthen inclusive education, that is to say, those hands that schools and institutes end up asking for. It is strongly requested to reduce the number of students per classroom to be able to monitor each person's needs more individually, and we also had this in the March agreement. It is also often talked about the time dedicated to more bureaucratic tasks, and the reduction of bureaucracy was also a structural part of the agreement. And we add to this, and it was necessary to do so, the part of salary increase. Probably [the salary increase] is not the first request that many of the teachers who were demonstrating in the street put on the table, but, on the other hand, I think that if we want to aim for excellence, we need professionals who are recognized.

It is evident that this agreement represents an improvement in the working conditions of teachers. How will we notice this in the quality of education?

— In daily life we will have to start noticing it from next academic year, because we have already approved the incorporation of more than 1,700 new professionals. We also have the new budget, which we hope will finalize its processing, and which also represents a significant strengthening of the educational system. But certainly, results in education are cooked slowly. This does not mean that automatically next year we will already have better results; we wish it were so, but we will probably see a clear improvement of the whole system in three or four years.

Returning to the agreement, there is a part that talks about reducing, almost eliminating, the option of conducting interviews to select teachers. Does the Government share this idea or has it had to concede?

— Interviews are finally preserved for certain more unique profiles related to inclusive and complex schools. It is a topic where it is important to strike a balance. This is very easy to say and difficult to do. I think that, on the one hand, the role of the directors and their autonomy must be strengthened so that they can exercise pedagogical leadership; otherwise, it is very difficult to develop these programs. And we must make this compatible in some way with the stability of the teaching staff. It is up to us to make this balance between the stability of the teaching staff and the stability of the professionals possible, but from here it is true that the directors have a very important role. They must have autonomy and this need for decision-making in their educational project must also be understood.

Just before the negotiations, the controversial pilot plan to integrate an undercover police officer in some schools came to light. A month later, what are these officers doing in the institutes that have remained within the trial?

— It is a plan that arose from listening to principals and territorial services, who informed me that in certain areas they were encountering problems and conflicts that came from the environment, but which strongly impacted them. Now, the tasks of these agents depend on the center to which they have been assigned. There are centers where, in fact, these people were already working from a different perspective and, therefore, know the reality of the centers very well, which is why more progress has been made. In other schools or institutes, it is a person who is now observing everything that is happening, meeting with the management team to see what type of student profile there is and how to take charge of the situation. The paces are also different: in the end, it is a person who has to get along very well with the management team, and the right moment must also be found to make this approach. It is true that we come from tense days; apart from this program, we had the staff meetings with a certain tension derived from these mobilizations. I believe that now what is expected is that it will be mainly from the beginning of next academic year that this can gain more speed.

Finally, have unions been asked for a commitment to ensure some peace in the coming years?

— It is true that other autonomous communities, in other agreements that have been made, have incorporated clauses to guarantee this social peace. We have not done so because in the end we think it is important that we all —because we have been able to see how much this has cost— are aware of the budgetary effort that has been made to take this step forward. Surely there are many deficiencies or accumulated deficits from this year, but we must be aware that we have to find moments in the coming years to be able to recover it. We cannot do everything at once, but we must value what we have achieved and from here continue building.