The Student Families Association (AFA) of the Valldeflors school in Tremp (Lleida) opposes the closure of a line of the first year of early childhood education, I3, and fears that many families will be forced to go to the other school in the school. locality, a religious charter school.
This Tuesday they hung posters in the school and began collecting signatures and on Thursday they will gather in front of the territorial Education services to denounce the situation. Families believe that “it is important” to maintain all lines of early childhood education since they offer “essential” educational continuity for students, allowing them to grow in a “stable and known” environment, with comprehensive monitoring of their educational process.
This Tuesday, the AFA Valldeflors received the support of the CGT union, which expressed along the same lines. Trade unionist Emili Llorente has said that what they are trying to do in Tremp is “support the charter school”, while families and teachers are “very happy” with the operation of the public school.
Llorente added that a secular family may end up having to take their children to a religious school if the I3 line from the Valldeflors public school is eliminated.
The members of the community, also present at the Tremp event, have said that they will ask the Parliament about this issue and have already registered a battery of questions regarding the decision of the Department of Education to limit enrollment in the Valldeflors public school.
The education spokesperson, Joan Carles Gallego, believes that the measure “is not justified in any way”, since “it is a direct attack on the free choice of center that students and families have.”
Thus, the commons say they understand “the discomfort that the decision is causing to a large number of families who want to continue educating their children in a public and non-religious school” and add “suddenly and worrying” that the Generalitat “prioritizes a religious concerted center and does not bet on the future of the public educational system in the city through quality and inclusive public schools like Valldeflors.
For their part, UGT-SP have stated that they will always be against the educational policies of the Government of Catalonia, which do not ensure quality and educational cohesion and of course belittling coexistence between workers in the educational sector.
UGT-SP wants the pre-registration process to “be carried out normally”, without “any interference or signaling”, allowing families to exercise their right to choose a center “without coercion”. The union is committed to maintaining all lines, given that they represent a drop in ratios and an improvement in the quality of education.
