Concerted education: a Spanish anomaly that must end

An adage attributed to very different voices says that “either you live as you think, or you will end up thinking as you live.” This is the underlying problem we face in education and in current educational policy in Spain.

It is confirmed in the latest proposal of the current Government. It proposes increasing public financing for concerted education in the next General State Budgets. That is, allocate more tax money from the entire population to private institutions (of the Catholic hierarchy for the most part) with the aim that, given that their public financing is increased, they will stop segregating so much.

This privatization of public education, allocating more public money to concerts, while reducing the number of classrooms and public centers, is disguised with the well-known strategy of “malmenorism”. The lesser evil.

Given that the concerts are using the collection of illegal fees and discriminatory criteria to segregate a part of the population for reasons of social and economic class or for being migrants, minorities or having special educational needs (80% are enrolled in public education ), instead of applying current legislation and sanctioning those centers that discriminate or directly suspending their concert, what is done is to incentivize them with more public money so that they stop doing it… so much.

This is the consequence of this drift of “weak thinking” that ends up justifying the most conservative and retrograde positions with the argument of the “lesser evil” or the tagline of “what to do in the meantime”, which is always used on these occasions. Given that the concerts are there, enshrined in the different educational laws of the PSOE, and given that the PP strengthens and prioritizes them in the autonomous communities where it governs, we will have to do something to reduce somewhat or disguise the reality that the concerts They are the biggest factor in school segregation in this country.

Therefore, instead of guaranteeing the right to equal and quality education to future generations, regardless of their economic and social conditions, through a single public network and advancing the progressive suppression of all educational concerts, which What the Government does is to seek the benevolence and connivance of these educational companies so that they do not discriminate so much, paying them more for it.

Using an exaggerated but very clear simile in this regard, we could say that what the Government proposes is “paying an abuser to abuse his or her partner less.” This is what has been put into practice in Catalonia and now in the Basque Country with the euphemism of “pact against segregation”, which is nothing more than a pact to disguise the numbers and maintain underlying segregation: the educational concerts themselves . It is argued that, if the subsidized centers that segregate are paid more so that they do it a little less, we will achieve less segregation.

The problem is that this aberration is supported even by academic, political and union sectors or the third sector. The report ‘For an inclusive charter school’ by the NGO Save the Children, which points out that Spain is the OECD country that most segregates students between public and charter schools according to their socioeconomic situation, and its proposals are based on accepting this model of concerts and prescribe more concerted education, further increasing their financing. That is, we are buying the neoliberal framework of the privatization model of education.

The surprising thing is that, with the demographic decline, what should have been in place for a long time is a plan to progressively suppress concerts (negotiating the departure of teachers, nationalizing when necessary…), as has already been done in Catalonia or Castilla and Lion. But, on the contrary, public schools are being closed and private schools are being maintained or increased, as the autonomous communities governed by the PP are doing. And it seems that this is going to be a trend that will increase every year, if there is not enough political will to change the educational model.

Because publicly owned and managed education is the only one that guarantees the universal right to education under conditions of equality and democracy, which most and best ensures equality and democratic coexistence of people with different sociocultural backgrounds; and therefore, the one that best contributes to equity and social cohesion.

In the 80s, when there was a demographic avalanche and there were not enough public places, it may have made some sense to do concerts with private entities, but now it doesn’t make any sense. Currently, what research supports is that the demand for concerts is maintained by families’ belief that social “contacts” and classmates can influence the socio-labor future of their sons and daughters. The findings confirm that behind many invocations to the “freedom” of choosing a school what is hidden is the rejection of social mixing, of educating sons and daughters with those who are not of the same class and that concerts are serving the middle and upper classes to get away from foreign students and the lower classes. That is to say, by going to charter schools, families guarantee that their sons and daughters are far from the most diverse and vulnerable students and are educated in those centers where the social class they aspire to reach is concentrated.

Not even the Constitution protects concerts. Article 27 gives the possibility of creating private centers, but in no way does it give the possibility that families must receive public aid to choose between both networks, public and private, nor that the latter must be financed with public funds. This was stated by the Constitutional Court in ruling 86/1985, of July 10, issued by its Second Chamber: “(…) being completely clear that the right to education – to free education in basic education – does not include the right to free education in any private centers, because public resources should not go, unconditionally, wherever individual preferences go.”

In short, what is needed is courage and political will to stop being an anomaly in Europe where education is fundamentally public and move once and for all towards the 21st century, as demanded by the green tides, the teachers and the unions, the social movements and progressive educational communities, thus overcoming the legacy of the dictatorship that left the education of this country in the hands of the Catholic hierarchy and that now wants to be reinforced as a market niche for vulture funds and business companies in order to convert education in a niche of profit extraction and not in an equal right that we must guarantee to future generations.

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