How are you, how are you? Today we bring fewer topics, but with a little more development. It also arrived a little later than usual, we were waiting because I wanted to include the PIACC report on adult education, which was released today at 11 am and I will tell you more below. Let’s go to trouble.
I am going to continue for another week with the Ayuso-universities issue, because it is quite serious. But we broaden the focus. The people of Madrid are not the only rectors who are squeezed by their government (hello, Moreno Bonilla).
Tuesday was an intense day in the Community of Madrid. It was the day that the rectors of public universities met with President Ayuso to talk about financing. Expectations were high for the event, after the leaders raised their voices due to the critical situation they are experiencing.
The president tried to anticipate and change the pace of the rectors by revealing, minutes before the appointment, that Madrid was finally going to adhere to the María Goyri program, for which the ministry is going to co-finance (without corresponding, it does not have the powers) the hiring more than 600 teachers. Madrid was the only community that was not going to participate in the program. The only one. Castilla y León is going to join late and its universities are not thrilled with the idea either, but it will do it.
Then it turned out that this statement included, at the bottom, some qualification. Since it does not like the program, Madrid would send an alternative to the ministry to “adapt” it to its reality. The president who always talks about equality between Spaniards wants her own version of a national program. Yesterday, Monday, it became known that it intends to avoid the obligation to keep these teachers when their contracts end, as contemplated in the program. The ministry responded by letter that it does not plan to do so. The program is what it is, and if you want to join like the rest of the communities, there is the document to sign. Finally, the regional government gave in and yesterday afternoon announced that it will sign the agreement as it is.
In the meeting with the rectors, Ayuso informed them that investment in universities will increase by 4%. It is more than the 0.9% expected, but those responsible for the six public centers later explained that it is still insufficient. That do not reach the minimum. Madrid is the richest region in Spain, but the one with the most expensive university and the one that finances it the worst (these two things have a clear relationship). There are campuses that are falling apart. The state of the Complutense what is related here The Country is paradigmatic of this situation.
With this blow to the university, Ayuso culminates five years of systematic attack on the public. In Education he has hit all the sticks and has managed to anger everyone. It even has merit. The preschool teachers, the Primary teachers, and the Secondary school teachers have gone on strike (seven days!). The employers of children’s centers and associations of private centers without agreement have protested their policies. He has redoubled his commitment to the privatization of the FP, without forgetting that moment during confinement when he decided that the best thing for the children who were left without the school cafeteria was to receive a pizza every day. Perhaps his greatest achievement has been to bring unions such as CNT or CGT with others such as ANPE or CSIF, at ideological opposites, to agree against his policies.
The tactic is old. The public service is deteriorated to make it inefficient, so that people go to the private sector. In case there is any doubt, there is the Master law, the first and only educational law of the Community of Madrid, made ad hoc to defend the private charter school. You deteriorate one service and reinforce the other, so that when people stop going to the public you can justify a lower investment. It is exactly the same thing that is happening with Health or public transportation.
Ayuso, by the way, is not alone. It is true that he has much more focus, but his party partner Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla discreetly follows in his wake. Andalusian universities are also crying out for help and demanding 50 million euros from the Board. Today they have a joint event to talk about their situation.
The university advisor says he does not understand “the concern” of the rectors. Memory is short: he himself could have been on the other side of that discussion a few months ago, when he was in charge at the University of Córdoba.
This week we talked about…
- Do we teach mathematics wrong? This is what Pablo Beltrán Bellicer, professor of Mathematics didactics at the University of Zaragoza, believes. And partly for that reason, he explains, Spain is stagnant in this matter. That’s what the latest edition of TIMSS says, an international exam that evaluates students aged 9-10. Spain came out average, below average, far from the best and with a growing gap between boys and girls in one of the few academic disciplines where men perform better than women.
- This expert in teaching how to teach explains in this interview that one of the main problems that the system has is that in Spain there are no specialist mathematics teachers in primary school. An anomaly, he believes, if you take into account that there are those in Physical Education, Music or English. To teach these subjects you have to be trained, but not for mathematics. And that causes generalist teachers to teach classes, without specific knowledge of mathematics teaching (how it is taught and learned). Beltrán believes that “it is necessary to change the classroom culture”, that in this subject there is a lot of mechanical repetition of exercises but little reasoning. I suggest you read it and then criticize it.
- As we are in the season of large international studies (you will remember that ICILS, on computer literacy, was recently published), today PIACC was published, which measures educational level and competencies of adults. It does not bring good news either: in Spain, one in three people between 16 and 65 years old has “relevant deficiencies” in reading, mathematics and problem solving. If in other tests we usually come out in the middle, here we are “significantly” below the EU average. In this link you find the article, fresh out of the oven.
- The documentary that brings sexual violence to high schools. Many institutes are projecting these days You are not alone: the fight against the herda documentary about the famous Sanfermines case of 2016 (and others) as a tool for reflection on the structural nature of sexual violence. Sometimes they organize debates afterwards, like this one between the two directors with a thousand students who asked them questions or comments and in which my colleague Marta Borraz was present. Exercises like this are very necessary, say some teachers who participate in this initiative. Our teenagers do not remember (know?) the case of ‘the pack’, it happened eight years ago and they were barely children.
To upload grade
- One hour per week of specialized care for a child with special needs in Malaga. José David is six years old and at school he has trouble paying attention and has difficulty expressing himself. He has attention deficit disorder, autism spectrum disorder (grade 1, the mildest) and a specific language disorder. For this reason, the Government of Andalusia offers a few hours of a hearing and language teacher and, once a week, for one hour, a specialized teacher. The educational support ends there, denounce the school and his family. He is not even the only one, there are two dozen children in the same situation at the Rosa de Gálvez CEIP in Málaga.
- The doctorate of a former Ciudadanos deputy annulled. For plagiarism. It is a very unusual circumstance. First was the Complutense, “due to lack of originality.” Emilia Fernández, who was in the Madrid Assembly between 2019 and 2021, appealed. The TSJM was less lenient: it speaks directly of plagiarism. She now considers herself a victim of “an unfair and arbitrary process” and has abandoned university teaching.
I leave it here.
Thanks for reading us and the support.
See you next week!
#Morant #wins #fight #Ayuso
