The Ombudsman of Greuges, Esther Giménez-Salinas, has highlighted that school segregation is based on racism, a racism that exists in society and that reproduces the administration and educational centers by taking measures that do not facilitate reception and equality. of opportunities for foreign students.
The Catalan trustee, who has presented the report on the follow-up to the fight against school segregation in which the administration, parties, political unions and the entire educational community are involved, asks that new measures be defined to combat what she called “structural racism.” “. In the educational system, students encounter “segregating mechanisms” behind which underlie inequality of opportunities: groupings by level, referral to curricular diversification programs, orientation towards professionalizing itineraries…
After having gotten all the agents involved to fight against the concentration of vulnerable students in certain educational centers with a pact promoted by the Ombudsman and which has led to a Government decree that has allowed the more equitable distribution of students, ” We have to create an integration model that manages to guarantee equity and social cohesion,” said the trustee this morning in the Parliament of Catalonia during the meeting of the commission of the Pact against School Segregation, in the presence of the councilor Anna Simó, and the president of the Parliament, Anna Erra.
“If within an educational center there are segregating mechanisms, good results will not be achieved” – he explained – nor will education function as a “social elevator.” Therefore, it calls for an approach to the reception of foreign students from a non-racist perspective, with the creation of a study commission to analyze how the arrival of racialized students into the system develops and has suggested the integration of the general management into the commission. of Migrations, Refugees and Antiracism.
The trustee has presented the progress report on the deployment of Decree 11/2021, which is “on the right track”, although with the need to readjust some aspects and promote a shock plan to avoid the high concentration of students with spatial needs. due to their vulnerable socioeconomic and cultural condition in 250 very “ghettoized” Catalan centers.
But, in general terms, it has positively valued the 20% reduction in school segregation thanks to the distribution of vulnerable students, highlighting the role of the charter school, which has received a greater proportion of students than the public one. The growing heterogenization of the social composition of educational centers has been possible thanks to the greater detection of students with special needs (from 7 to 24 percent in the two grades in which the decree has been deployed).
But this progressive reduction must be accompanied by measures to guarantee the reception of foreigners and their inclusion in schools and prevent it from resulting in “internal segregation in each center” and a lack of attention to the educational needs within each center.
Giménez-Salinas explained that in 23 years the number of students of immigrant origin has increased. It has gone from 2.5% in 2000 to 19% today. Half of the growth in students is of foreign origin. And this migratory flow has been specifically intense in Catalonia where 16% of the general population is foreign, compared to 10% in Spain and 8% in Europe.
Added to the cultural and language difficulty is the economic situation. Of the immigrant population settled in Catalonia, half are unemployed and at risk of poverty.
“Foreign students arrive later and leave the educational system before the rest of their classmates,” said the trustee, “which makes it very difficult for education to act as a social elevator.”
In general, in his opinion, public policies that do not fully respond to the inclusion needs of the migrant population. “How do we welcome them?” he asked himself. “What model do we have to offer?”
In this sense, he has asked the members of the monitoring commission of the Pact against Segregation, which includes the educational community, the administrations (Generalitat and city councils), unions, families and parliamentary groups, to refocus the situation from a perspective not racist. And he has suggested joining the commission of the general directorate of Migrations, Refugees and Antiracism, dependent on the Conselleria de Igualtat i Feminismes.
On the other hand, the department and the Ombudsman will jointly review the aid given to educational centers to educate students with specific educational needs, known as “economic backpacks.”
In her speech, the counselor stated that in the 2022-2023 academic year, 9.2 million euros were allocated to this aid and that in the current year, just last quarter, a provision of 19.4 million euros has been provisioned. , waiting to “have definitive data after the incorporation of students between January and May or June.”
This aid extends this year to the levels of P-3 and P-4 and 1st and 2nd of ESO in public educational centers, and involves complementary activity, free school supplies and excursions at the charter school.
During the commission meeting, representatives of the charter school regretted knowing the amount of this endowment because the economic report of the decree committed to providing the backpacks for the 2023-2024 academic year with 83 million euros, well above the amount encrypted by Simó. “Only 23% of the committed resources have been invested,” says a statement from the Fundació Escola Cristiana de Catalunya, despite the “high involvement” of these centers in the fight against segregation. Thus, the Ombudsman’s report included the objective for the charter school of enrolling 35,500 students with socioeconomic needs, and more than 48,500 have already enrolled.
This institution, which includes most social initiative schools, also recalls the delays that are occurring in payments. “We are in the second quarter of the school year, vulnerable students have been in school since September, but the centers have not received any financial amount for the backpacks,” the representatives of these schools have stated.
Finally, they demand a review of the amount of the school bag because the cost of the place in a concerted center is 1,500 euros (according to the Complaints Ombudsman), but the school bag
It only covers 988 euros.
