The Government approved this Tuesday the draft law to reduce the maximum number of students per class and teaching hours for teachers. The reform, which will now be sent to Congress, where the Executive will have to gather enough support to pass it, would reduce the ratio to 25 in ESO (currently 30) and to 22 in Primary (currently 25) throughout Spain. And it would also decrease teachers’ class hours to 23 hours in schools and Special Education centers, and to 18 in secondary education. Students with special educational needs ―that is, with disabilities or, for example, autism spectrum disorder (ASD)― will count double for the purpose of calculating the ratio.
“It is a commitment to give teachers more time to better prepare their classes, to attend to their students, and to carry out their work in dignified conditions,” stated the Minister of Education, Milagros Tolón, at the press conference after the Council of Ministers. “We said that this was going to be the legislature of teachers, and today we are fulfilling that,” she added.
As a consequence of the falling birth rate and the agreements between unions and regional governments, ratios are already at that level in Primary in 12 of the 17 communities, according to STES. In almost the entire country, on the other hand, teaching hours are already at the maximum proposed by the project (and which the government of Mariano Rajoy, of the PP, increased amidst education cuts following the 2008 financial crisis).
The unions, which have negotiated the reform with the ministry in recent months, consider it important, however, to safeguard the limits to prevent autonomous communities from worsening teachers’ conditions in both areas should they face budgetary problems.
One of their demands, which the ministry has not included in the project, is that not only students with special educational needs count double for the ratio, but all those who require educational support, which would considerably expand their number, as this category includes children with dyslexia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), socio-educational vulnerability ―that is, very poor―, or who have no knowledge of the language of learning (normally due to being migrant students recently incorporated into the system). The number of students who would count double would thus increase from 249,494 to 1,088,413, according to the latest official data.
The draft law establishes that, within six months of the law’s approval, the ministry will develop a decree to reduce ratios in the second cycle of Early Childhood Education (ages 3-6, currently 25), Basic Vocational Training (30), and Baccalaureate (where there can be up to 35 adolescents per class), although it does not specify by how many. Another of the main demands of the unions has been to include intermediate-level Vocational Training in the ratio reduction, as it is one of the educational programs with the highest dropout rate (one third of students leave the cycles unfinished).
Comisiones Obreras, which this Tuesday called a strike throughout Spain in the first cycle of Early Childhood Education, ages 0-3, has included among its demands that this stage also be included in the ratio reduction project.
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