The directors of educational centers have received the guidelines of the Department of Education for the next academic year 2022-2023 in which the specific treatment of Spanish as a “curricular and educational use” language does not appear, as stated in the new law on the use and learning of the official languages ??in schools, approved by a majority in Parliament last Wednesday.
Sources from the Ministry did not explain the absence of the adaptation of the guidelines to the new regulations, which supports the hypothesis of a technical oversight. The new document does not change anything with respect to the guidelines that schools received last year regarding the use and treatment of languages ??in schools and that specify that Catalan, and Occitan in Aran, “are the languages ??normally used as languages vehicular and learning of the educational system, as well as the Catalan sign language when appropriate”. Not to mention the use of Spanish as the teaching language. But the need to teach content in Spanish in contexts where this is not the first language of the majority of the students is foreseen, in order to guarantee competences in both languages ??at the end of ESO.
The documents for the organization and management of the centers are published on June 7, the day before the approval of the law on the use and learning of languages, described by the President of the Government as a great country agreement. These consist of 240 pages and specify diverse and technical aspects of the type of actions, plans, regulations and economic management. They change relatively little from year to year and, for ease of use, are preceded by a list of what’s new so that managers can focus on what’s new. This year, aspects such as the plan on schools free of violence, the support and guidance units for vulnerable students or the updating of the regulations for nursery schools are highlighted.
But there is no reference to novelties in the chapter on the treatment and use of languages ??in the educational system, which consists, like the previous year, of 16 pages. Nor is there any reference to documents “pending update”.
The previous guidelines for educational centers were published on July 2, 2021. Since then, the ruling of 25% of Spanish by the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC), the decree law on the use of Catalan, which rules out percentages on languages, published by the Government, and the approval of the law on the use and learning of official languages ??in non-university education, which recognizes the “curricular and educational use” of Spanish and reaffirms the Catalan as vehicular language. In it, no percentages are established. It was agreed by PSC, JxCat, ERC and En Comú Podem.
In addition, the Department of Education sent the directors of the center some instructions requesting that they answer a questionnaire within a month to verify the validity of their linguistic projects. Among other questions, it asks if Spanish is the language of curricular use in their classrooms and if percentages are avoided in the use of languages. The centers, according to the Ministry, have the support of the educational inspection, which is the one that will validate the answers in the first instance. In this way, the minister affirmed that the department would thus assume legal responsibility before the TSJC.
