Prohens, without Vox, maintains the pilot plan for language choice in Balearic schools

Education’s intention is that next academic year 2025-26 the plan will be extended to secondary schools that wish to do so, regardless of whether the pact between PP and Vox that included this measure has been broken since last summer by decision of the national leadership of Vox, and after Santiago Abascal’s party has blocked Prohens’ second budgets for 2025 and forced it to extend the 2024 accounts.

The Prohens executive does not back down

This pioneering language plan, which has generated strong opposition from the main Catalan unions on the Islands, is applied from this 2024-25 academic year in 4th grade and allows parents to choose the language – between Spanish or Catalan – for the first time. of mathematics and environmental knowledge subjects. In practice, it opens the possibility of studying these subjects in Spanish, given that the vast majority of schools teach them in Catalan.

In this way, the Marga Prohens executive is not willing to back down and assumes this plan as his own, of which he says he is “strongly” convinced. The Minister of Education, Antoni Vera, meeting this Monday with the directors of subsidized centers to advance the Executive’s roadmap and the news in the new academic year, has defended the free language choice program because it is based “on the vehicularity of the two official languages” and in “a fundamental pillar such as center autonomy.”

Vera insists that the plan has worked “perfection” in its first year of operation, despite criticism from some families and the Escuela de Todos platform, who criticize the “lukewarmness” of it being a voluntary measure. for schools and not a parental right.

Voluntary, but with half the hours in Catalan

The pilot plan is voluntary and the decision to join falls solely on the educational centers, with the obligation that at least half of the total teaching hours be given in Catalan.

Despite the strong campaign against it carried out by unions such as the STEI, defenders of schools only in Catalan, the first educational centers to adhere to the pilot plan for language choice were Nuestra Señora de Montesión, Can Bonet, Mare de Déu de les Neus, Sant Vicenç de Paül-Sa Vileta, San Alfonso Maria Ligorio, Santa Monica, Our Lady of Consolation of Ibiza, Our Lady of Consolation of Alaró, Our Lady of Consolation of Palma, Aixa-Llaüt and Juan de la Cierva.

In his meeting this Monday with the charter schools, the Balearic Minister of Education highlighted compliance with the Framework Agreement for charter schools, in parallel with that of public schools. And he has highlighted the significant progress in making the educational cycle from 0 to 3 years free of charge, thanks to the concert of this educational stage, which makes the Balearic Islands the first educational community in Spain to achieve this.

The Department of Education reaffirms its commitment to equal resources between public and subsidized education in the face of the previous legislature chaired by Francina Armengol, where even Podemos, a government partner of the PSOE, questioned the subsidized school.

The Prohens government is also committed to improving management and communication with the centers through new digital platforms, with the aim of reducing bureaucracy and increasing efficiency.