Lukewarm response from Councilor Anna Simó to the proposals made by the driving group for educational improvement that was commissioned by the Government to propose measures after the social effect of the negative results of the PISA 2022 report. “We assume the proposals of the driving group, but not having a budget prevents us from carrying out more ambitious actions,” the person in charge of Education justified.
In a context of extended budgets and Catalan elections just over a month away, Simó has proposed educational plans that were already announced and that have not been budgeted for.
In fact, in his speech he has ordered all the actions initiated by the department in recent years, explaining them under the strategic premises defined by the committee of experts.
In its conclusion it has included three commitments. The first, to prepare a basic learning guide for each course with the essential things that must be learned to pass. Secondly, “review the regulations” to create professional teaching profiles and promote leading figures in mathematics at the preschool and primary school stage.
And, finally, a program to improve teacher competencies in language and mathematics for the 250 centers with the worst performance, with methodologies for learning reading and writing, development of materials, etc.
As a novelty, it has proposed including in the 2024-2025 academic year a module in Catalan in those medium-level training cycles for people care. As a promise, the review of the applications between the administration and the centers to debureaucratize the processes and a nurse in each infant and primary center stands out, a program carried out in collaboration with the Department of Health, which is the one that must pay for it. “It depends on your budget,” he added.
The committee of experts delivered a dossier to the minister on March 6, a week before President Pere Aragonès anticipated the elections after failing to approve the budgets for 2024. An amount of 50 million had been reserved to implement some of the measures in the dossier but it has been left in the dark.
The councilor explained that the budget for education, despite being extended, will increase by 312 million (the forecast was an increase of 680 million) which will be invested in teachers for an inclusive school and in the promotion of extracurricular time for the most vulnerable students. in programs that contemplate school reinforcement. The forecast is to increase the workforce by 1,914 teachers.
The report analyzed the situation of the educational system and proposed medium and long-term reforms, a monitoring commission and a national agreement to improve the educational system. “This document will be the basis of a country pact,” she assured.
