The families of the students in the sixth grade of the Escola de la Concepció de Barcelona are more than worried, and all because of the difficulties they sense that some of their children will have to get a place and attend the ESO at Jaume Balmes, one of the institutes of the neighborhood where the school is located. The problem resides in the priority, via regulation, of professional music or dance students who simultaneously study these studies with secondary education and who have enrollment preference from the last year in this center even if they do not live in the neighborhood or come from affiliated centers in high school At the moment, 19 of these students have pre-registered at Balmes (17 from non-affiliated centers and two that are). The families propose that the ratio per classroom be increased or that another line be opened to mitigate the decline in supply.
Jordi Iglesias, member of the AFA de la Concepció, points out to La Vanguardia that 17 of the students have signed up when there are 75 places, “which is 23% of the offer”. “This fact greatly reduces the possibilities of access to the center for students from the primary schools attached to the Balmes, who are students from the neighborhood”, he warns.
Faced with this reality, they decided to contact the Barcelona Education Consortium, which responded in writing on Monday. It does not assess the requests to increase the ratio or create a new line, but is limited to confirming “the priority of access to the enrollment” – by means of a resolution of the Department of Education – of the students who are simultaneously taking the ESO and professional courses in music or dance. He also argues that there are two other centers in Barcelona (apart from Balmes) where these students have priority (IE Poeta Maragall and Fort Pius) and remembers that the Concepció school has, in addition to Balmes , two more affiliated institutes: also the Poeta Maragall and the Eixample School Institute.
It’s true, students with priority enrollment have two more centers they can enroll in, but they have mostly opted for Balmes, where 17 have pre-enrolled, one at Poeta Maragall and one at Fort Pius.
Beyond this, the Consortium highlights in the letter that “guarantees a place in the 1st year of ESO for families in the 6th year of Conception in one of the three attached centers as long as these three centers have been incorporated into the first three application options”.
The answer does not satisfy the families. At the moment, they have contacted the other primary schools attached to the Balmes to try to coordinate so that the claim is not just from one centre. In addition, they do not rule out resorting to administrative litigation and contesting the prescriptions.
