The Ministry, which has amended most of the considerations of the Legal Council, will design the map with “wide areas”
The Governing Council approved this Thursday morning the controversial decree for the admission of students that tries to avoid the ‘Celaá law’ so that Murcian students do not necessarily have to study at the school or institute in their neighborhood. According to the press release of the Ministry, Education does not zone the map of the Region, and indicates that the delimitation will be designed each course. Nor does it specify the criteria that will be followed, despite the recommendations of the Legal Council, beyond saying that urban characteristics, access conditions and school transport, demographic evolution, the capacity of existing centers and the offer will be taken into account. educational.
In addition, Education has made it clear that “it is committed to school areas that are large enough to ensure freedom of choice of educational center by families, beyond the neighborhood of residence.” In this way, the regional administration deactivates the spirit of educational reform. The Legal Council itself warned in its report that “excessively large areas of influence in geographical terms will blur the priority criterion of proximity, making it irrelevant in practice”, but also clarified that “if they are reduced they can put freedom of choice at risk in the center”. As explained by Education, «the freedom of choice of school for families is the best guarantee for promoting equal opportunities. For this reason, the concepts of area and school zone have been provided with great flexibility in order to effectively make the freedom of choice of center compatible with the importance that the LOMLOE grants to the priority criterion of proximity. School zones may be made up of one or more school areas. In the event that several schooling areas are integrated into the same area by application of the principle of proximity, those people with a home or place of work in any of said areas will have the same proximity criterion score, both in their area and in those that make up the school zone.
The breadth of the school zones will be determined by the Ministry, after hearing the town councils, based on principles such as the trend in schooling needs, urban characteristics, conditions of access and school transport, demographic evolution, the capacity of existing centers and the educational offer”, emphasizes Education.
For the rest, the Ministry has taken into account most of the recommendations of the Legal Council, which in its report dealt a blow to the draft decree. Some of the novelties introduced by the new decree, which will determine the admission of students for the next course, are the following:
Priority and complementary criteria
The new decree defines as priority criteria for admission those that the Organic Law of Education lists: the existence of siblings enrolled in the center; proximity to the home or workplace of one of their fathers, mothers or legal guardians, and income of the family unit. The consideration of these criteria as priority is set in the LOMLOE, so it is not possible to consider others with this category that are different from those listed.
«However, the Ministry has defined the complementary criteria for the admission of students in order to maintain the excellent results of recent years for obtaining a place in the center requested as the first option: large family accreditation, disability, working in the center for which a place is requested, single parenthood, multiple births, being a victim of gender-based violence or terrorist acts, foster care of the applicant, as well as the criteria determined by the school or being the first center requested by families.
New admission scale
This new definition of the priority and complementary criteria has forced the Ministry to «readjust the scores awarded in order to guarantee the legal certainty of the admission process. The calculation of the scale has been designed based on an exhaustive analysis of data from the applications for admission to a place in the Region in order to respect the principles introduced by the LOMLOE, but without substantially modifying the admission results. of students that in recent years have produced such favorable data».
In this way, the Ministry, within its powers, has prioritized having siblings in the same center over the principle of proximity to home, which is the variable that can have the highest score in the scale according to the LOMLOE.
Thus, in the second cycle of Early Childhood Education, the maximum scores that will be applied will be for the criterion of siblings enrolled in the center (11.25 points) and that of proximity to the home or workplace (5 points).
Other criteria would be the income of the family unit (3 points), large family (2), disability (2.9), work in the center (2.9), single parenthood (2), multiple birth (1), victim of gender violence (1), victim of terrorism (1), family foster care of the applicant (2.9), criteria of the school (1) and first center requested (2.9).