27,000 teachers return to Canarian centers with the challenge of the new law: "There is uncertainty"
Archive photo of a class at El Tablero public school. /
education
The consolidated workforce rises by 1,600 teachers after the agreement between Education and unions. The Lomloe reaches the odd courses and there are only drafts of the curricula
Some 27,000 teachers join the schools and institutes of the Canary Islands this Thursday
with the challenge of starting to implement the Lomloe, the eighth educational law of democracy, in odd-numbered courses. And they do so with a certain "boredom" and "uncertainty" due to the possibility that a future political change will make this effort ephemeral, according to the STEC and ANPE unions.
The return to the centers of the Canarian teachers is also marked by good news: this course, which starts normally and without distances in the institutes or bubble groups in the schools, there will be no covid reinforcement teachers, but the agreement signed between the Ministry of Education of the Canarian Government and the unions in July
consolidates an increase in the workforce of 1,600 teachers, which provides more resources for the centers. The number is similar to that of temporary reinforcement teachers last year.
This increase in teaching staff will be used to reduce ratios compared to the pre-Covid era, give more attention to vulnerable students or reduce weekly teaching hours in the body of teachers to 23.
Implementing the new law, which will be done gradually and this year it touches on the 1st, 3rd and 5th grades of Primary, 1st and 3rd of ESO and 1st of Baccalaureate and FP, is the greatest challenge for teachers. The objective is to change the way of teaching and learning, with a model that is less rote and more competent. Namely,
ensure that students learn to apply the knowledge they acquire.
But at the moment the course begins without the new approved curricula being approved in the Canary Islands -nor in most communities- and the teachers have as a guide to program the drafts published in the summer by the Ministry of Education.
«
You have to start almost from scratch, program againand all with the uncertainty of not knowing how long this law will last, because every three or four years we have a new one," says Emilio Armas, from the STEC teachers' union.
"The reality is that the course begins and the teachers only have the drafts of the curricula, they finished the course with a simple list of subjects per course and in the summer the drafts with the contents arrived," adds Armas, who maintains that
“This will mean that the schedules will be delayed and we will be with them until December, the teaching staff will have to invest all their energy in elaborating them».
“There is a lot of weariness and uncertainty,” declares Pedro Crespo, president of ANPE Canarias, who affirms that teachers are fed up with laws coming out without a minimum agreement between the parties that gives them stability. "Teachers are tired of applying new laws and not knowing what may come next, whether it will last a few or many years because the political forces have not been able to reach a prior agreement," adds Crespo, who also criticizes teachers for
"Go program based on the draft resumes"several of them from new subjects.
This course two laws will coexist in the classrooms, the Lomce and the Lomloe, "and the teaching staff continues to be a mere spectator of the educational process, because they give us the canned changes and thus no progress is made," summarizes Armas.
educational advance
What the representatives of the two majority education unions in the Canary Islands do applaud is the consolidation of the 1,600 teaching positions in the public education staff of the archipelago. “It is a good agreement because it means definitively incorporating covid places, consolidating them,” says Emilio Armas, who assures that
"There is still a lot to improve, because we are still below the state average".
"There are 1,600 more teachers compared to the 2019-20 academic year, before the pandemic, and it will allow progress in various aspects, to have more quality," says Pedro Crespo, who recalls that the agreement includes a review clause to assess the need to propose a multi-year plan to reduce ratios in all stages.
«The agreements we have reached represent a strong increase in the workforce to adapt them to the 21st century, to a new way of teaching, more competent
everything is aimed at improving Canarian education»emphasizes Fidel Trujillo, general director of Personnel of the Ministry of Education and who led the negotiation with the unions.
"It is the largest number of teachers per student group that the Canary Islands have ever had," says the senior Education official, who highlights that
the last agreement on teaching staff in the islands was in 2002.
According to the person in charge of Personnel of the Ministry of Education, normality marks this return to school for teachers. Of the 27,000 non-university public education teachers on the islands, 8,071 high school teachers and 6,315 teachers were appointed in July. "Half of the workforce moves and we have resolved the procedures in days," highlights Trujillo.
There is a small part of the teaching staff that has not yet been appointed. Education publishes these days the web offer of places not covered in the award process and there will be vacancies due to an increase in groups, partial shifts or substitutions of casualties. Trujillo assures that they will be covered next week before the students arrive on September 9, in Infant and Primary, and September 12, in ESO, high school and FP.
