The sick leave among teachers caused by the sixth wave of the pandemic have made it difficult on Monday to resume the school year in primary and secondary school. Infections by covid and other diseases among teachers – 11,380 accounted for by this newspaper in 15 communities, which would represent around 1.6% of its teaching staff – and the change in quarantines have left an uncertain panorama in many on Monday schools. Before Christmas, if the Primary teacher tested positive, the whole class was confined, but the teacher could impart knowledge at a distance if he was asymptomatic and did not need sick leave. Now if it is positive and in the class there are less than five cases, the teacher must isolate himself at home but the class will need a substitute for the students who continue to attend school in person, so the substitutions increase.
Waiting for the complete photograph (Asturias and Cantabria have not given data; Catalonia has only communicated the 2,088 substitutions it has made, not all the casualties it has; some autonomies have communicated only the number of absences due to covid, others only the total …), Both the Ministry of Education and the communities have tried to convey calm and optimism because they had anticipated that the avalanche of casualties would be much greater – up to 5% of the teaching staff -, given the daily numbers of infections during the holidays.
But the ministry’s calculations (which include the complete figure for Catalonia) finally leave the initial impact, this Monday, at 2% (about 15,000 absences). The unions, however, estimate higher percentages (between 4% and 6%). In any case, assuming that most of the absences are due to covid (this is admitted by the Galician Government, for example), the situation far exceeds that of before Christmas, when the highest number of teachers on sick leave due to covid was reached. since the start of the pandemic: 6,897 teachers.
In parallel, to the foreseeable increase in substitutions due to the change in quarantines agreed in the Public Health Commission between the Ministry and the autonomies, is added the increase in the workload for teachers, because if a class has less than five infected students, the teacher must divide his work between the face-to-face class and the distance classes. “The teacher will attend the face-to-face classes and must schedule the tasks and care of the four confined students, thereby increasing the teaching load,” denounces Vicent Mañés, president of the association of directors of public schools. The public school run by Mañes in Catarroja (Valencia) did not suffer an absence of teachers on Monday, but instead 25 students out of 250 reported being positive for coronavirus, 10% of the students.
In secondary school, Toni González Picornell, president of the association of directors of public institutes in Spain, has raised the estimate of teacher absences between 7% and 8%. “We would have liked to have had antigen tests to do small screenings and reduce the risk,” he lamented. Unlike other countries, Spain has not promoted covid detection tests in teachers and students, except in Catalonia for the contacts of those infected.
The number of sick leave has been uneven in the 17 regions, but in some with a high incidence of contagions it has been severely noticed, as in the Basque Country, with 800 teachers on sick leave (1.9% of the workforce), four times more than a year ago after the first Christmas in a pandemic. Madrid counted 2,377 teachers on leave this Monday, 2.5% of its staff of its 90,000 teachers. The Madrid Minister of Education, Enrique Ossorio, saw the glass half full and in statements to RNE said that he was more concerned in mid-December, when infections rose “a lot” and “vertically”, and that the reports of the Directorate General of Public Health on the spread of the virus after Christmas gave him “tranquility” and “security” to return to face-to-face classes.
In Catalonia, the Generalitat has appointed 1,517 substitutes this Monday, in addition to the 571 last Friday. Although the Government does not provide the figures for the previous year, the Ustec union (the majority of the sector in the community) does, which draws on information from the Department of Education. These reflect a 130% growth in replacements (1,524), compared to the first day of class in January of last year (639). Similarly, those made on December 10 (569), just after the December bridge, tripled, and those assigned were almost five times the days of November and December when more appointments were made (about three days a week), reports Ivanna Vallespin.
Meanwhile, Andalusia has recorded 925 absences from work among its 106,000 teachers this Monday, 28 less than last year. The Andalusian Minister of Education, Javier Imbroda, has repeated verbatim the words of the Minister, Pilar Alegría, who last week urged us to be cautious without creating panic: “Prudence yes, but not scaremongering. Educational centers function normally and set an example of responsibility, assuming such exceptional circumstances and respect for the rules. The fundamental thing is that our children and young people are in their schools and institutes, which is the way to safeguard their rights ”.
Throughout Spain, the CC OO union, which raises the range of sick leave between 4% and 6%, has demanded the hiring of backup teachers to save the ballot: “In the 2020-2021 academic year, 39,000 were hired and this course there have been 20,000. The extreme example is Murcia, which has removed all the covid reinforcements and has also reduced the ordinary quota. Today it is impossible to maintain the quota of 20 students per class and the safety distance of one and a half meters ”, criticizes Francisco García, head of Education at CC OO. “To make up for the current casualties, it would be necessary to urgently hire some 37,000 teachers, but also in two or three weeks the situation could worsen due to not adopting sufficient measures,” adds García.
The still photo of this return to school after Christmas will be given this Friday by the Government after collecting all the absence figures for the 17 communities. On December 24, the peak of students and teachers in quarantine was registered: 176,745 students were isolated (2% of the 8.5 million) and 27,456 were positive for coronavirus. Meanwhile, 6,897 teachers were in quarantine (0.9% of the 741,211 teachers) and 5,769 of them were infected. Only 20 days before, on December 3, the number of teachers in quarantine was one third: 2,179.
Among the students confined to home just before Christmas, the 66,650 Catalan students (4.72%) and 39,446 Madrid students (2.8%) stood out by region, far from other regions such as the Basque Country, with 15,401 isolated students. However, the percentage of Basque students was similar to that registered in Catalonia (4.3%) and Andalusia did not provide its number of students to the Ministry of Education. In parallel, just before Christmas Eve there were 5,433 classrooms (1.3% of the 416,872) of 1,647 centers in quarantine for outbreaks. In this global diagnosis, there were only 12 closed educational centers on December 24 (0.04% of the total).
You can follow EL PAÍS EDUCACIÓN at Facebook Y Twitter, or sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
#loss #teachers #change #quarantines #put #replacement #system #test