The provision of road safety education in the classrooms of schools in Spain is delayed due to the lack of teacher training, according to AESVi (Spanish Alliance for Children’s Road Safety), an association made up of 40 entities, including the three traffic directions (DGT, Servei Català del Trànsit and Traffic Directorate of the Basque Government), automobile clubs, manufacturers and importers of child restraint systems and accessories, and universities and research centers.
Driver education was incorporated last September into the educational curriculum of Primary Education, Secondary Education and Baccalaureate after the entry into force of royal decrees promoted by the Government that develop the Organic Law by which the Organic Law of Education is modified ( Lomloe).
This culminates three decades of claims. “It has a message and an immense social pedagogy: all the children will leave school with knowledge in moving around on foot, by scooter and by bicycle”, according to the general director of Traffic, Pere Navarro.
The AESVi has consulted various educational centers to learn first-hand how the teaching of road safety education is being implemented. Many of them impart the contents from the driver education workshops that they organize with the local police, waiting for some regulatory issues to be expanded, but many others cannot cover them due to lack of teacher training.
“The fact that driver’s education is taught in the classroom is still not a 100% reality,” said AESVi on Thursday, which demanded more teacher training from the authorities and the way in which this claim is going to be carried out.
“It is a priority that the competent authorities provide teachers with specific training resources taught by experts in the field who can transmit their knowledge to the teaching staff and these, in turn, to the students,” insisted Fernández.
