The School Council believes the ambition of the plan for 0 to 3 years is "negligible"
Archive photo of teachers from the second cycle of Infants in a school in the capital of Gran Canaria. /
education
The CEC values in its report on the next academic year the "commitment" to the early educational stage in the Canary Islands "after seven years of delay", but believes it is insufficient to overcome the schooling gap
One of the great novelties of the next academic year in the Canary Islands will be the opening, for the first time, of public schools to house students from the first cycle of Infants, one of the measures of the
canarian strategic plan for education from 0 to 3 years presented by the Canarian Government at the beginning of May.
This is one of the points where the report of the Canary Islands School Council (CEC) affects the programming of the next course on the islands. Thus, "it values positively" that there is finally a plan to increase public places in the first cycle of Infant "which arrives seven years late",
but considers its ambition "negligible" from the budgetary point of view.
The previous Government led by CC promised without presenting it a plan to increase the public offer in this early educational stage and the current Executive has done so in the third year of his mandate.
The Canary Islands School Council, a body that represents the educational community, applauds that there is already "a plan and a map" and recognizes the "commitment" of the Ministry of Education for teaching from 0 to 3 years, but emphasizes that
«The Canary Islands need, precisely because of the delay that is dragging on, a higher and more ambitious commitment politically and socially».
In this sense, it highlights that "at this time the schooling rate as seen on the map that the Ministry itself has shared is 28%, half that of the Spanish average (56%), so that
not only is the gap not narrowed, but it could be seen widened». That is why he calls for "greater investment and greater political ambition."
The Canarian plan, which runs until 2025, advocates creating new public places by creating nursery schools and opening classrooms in public schools that depend on the Ministry of Education. In September they will be
34 centers that they open classrooms -one group each- for two-year-old students, although three will also welcome boys and girls of one.
The initial global offer in schools will be
597 places, which will be distributed in 15 centers in Tenerife, eight in Gran Canaria, five in Lanzarote, four in Fuerteventura and two in La Palma.
Faced with the drop in students, the educational body affirms that there are many centers with empty classrooms that could be adapted to accommodate some teaching for which
“there are 40,000 potential male and female students in the Canary Islands, starting with the priority of intervening first in depressed areas».
The School Council believes that a significant increase in supply is necessary - "we are convinced that the future of education depends on the increase in early schooling," it says -, but stresses that this means creating new places in public centers,
"Not for giving a check to families, which is more aimed at outsourcing the offer".
No data
The School Council emphasizes that "it will be necessary to analyze the percentage of students who between now and 2025 will be enrolled in the first cycle of early childhood education since, if observed, only the data for the 2022-23 academic year is provided and not later, for comparison.
The CEC claims to prepare a proposal for
“generalized and progressive public offer” of education from 0 to 3 yearswith an ascending implementation, in such a way that in the 2024-25 academic year it reaches 60% of children under one year of age, 75% of one and 80% of boys and girls of two.
Little and unequal offer
The current picture of education from 0 to 3 years in the archipelago can be summed up in a few places, most of them private and distributed very unevenly between islands and municipalities. In the archipelago there are 241 nursery schools that provide education from 0 to 3 years, 162 private, 67.2%, with 7,957 places, and 79 public with an offer for 5,490 schoolchildren, a figure that the Government expects to rise to 9,369 in the course 24-25 with the strategic plan.
More emotional education: the CEC celebrates that it is given in every primary school but demands that it be in ESO
The Canary Islands School Council (CEC) highlights in its report that the next academic year will be complex due to the development in the classroom of two organic laws, the Lomloe, known as the Celaá law, and the FP law, "which are going to entail changes organizational and curricular depths.
Regarding the Lomloe, the CEC regrets the delay in the publication of the royal decrees on the curricula that have led in turn to the delay in the publication of the regional texts. And he expresses his "concern about the existing concern and uncertainty" in educational centers and by extension in the entire educational community, having to face new changes for the next school year. According to the School Council, "situations that should not be normal are being normalized, since it is the second time that a law or a change in the law is being implemented in a hurry, in a hurry, that is, in two years."
Regarding the design of the curricula, the CEC applauds the fact that the subject Emotional Education and Creativity has been extended to all primary school years, (Emocrea), "which has been having such good results and especially after the situation derived from the pandemic", but criticizes that there is not an offer of the same characteristics in ESO, "given the special need to help our adolescent students to know how to deal with their convulsive emotional world, as the Parliament of the Canary Islands claimed in February for unanimity in an NLP”.
Regarding the rest of the curricular design, the CEC affirms that "we will have to wait for its implementation and development to be able to assess and adjust everything that is necessary, but it recognizes the Ministry of Education's "explicit transversality in terms of Canarian content, as well as the initial modification towards the independent offer of the subject of History and Geography of the Canary Islands so that it will be taken by the entire 3rd ESO level».
