By Jaime Ortega.
The Spanish Government has postponed giving the green light on Friday to draft an Organic Law to Improve Education Quality (LOMCE), alluding to a lack of close economic aspects that accompanies the laws promoted by the Department of the Minister of Education , Culture and Sports.
The law was initiated by Jose Ignacio Wert, as reported by government sources.
The so-called ‘Wert Law’ has raised strong criticism from many areas in the community of education, and on Thursday, it became manifest by the large protest shown in the streets of major Spanish cities.
The strike has had the support of major unions and associations of parents and students.
In the case the Wert Law does not get reviewed by the Council of Ministers, the bill will not be transferred to the Congress of Deputies, initiating a parliamentary dilemma which will become a controversial dispute after 37 years on Spain’s democracy.
The Government’s aim is that the law is approved by “fall” so that they can fulfill the mandatory ten months to adapt the curriculum to the system on classrooms during 2014/2015, two years after its introduction.
The Congress adopted LOMCE as a piece of legislature on September 21. Since then, the promoter of the bill, Minister Jose Ignacio Wert, met with the board of the educational sector (trade unions) and a few autonomous communities, and submitted the initiative to the counsel of the School Board and the Council of State.
Wert will travel to Congress to find other ways other than those dictated by the law, to ensure education of spanish Castilian in Catalonia, and equal rights for children who are schooled separately.
The bill said “that communities have to financially support the centers who offer education in Castilian and, second, to guarantee by law the right of access to educational equality differentiated in some education centers.”
“It will start a process of reflection to assess whether it is applied to appropriate measures,” said the Secretary of the State of Education, Montserrat Gomendio, after hearing the law.
Another aspect that could be adopted by the Council of Ministers, is the design of courses which are offered as an alternative to religion, and that the opinion of the State Council may be discriminatory for students.
However, the current bill also envisages the disappearance of the current course of Education for Citizenship, which the State Council recommended to keep, but will not be heard in this regard.
“The incorporation or Werts Law includes the change for subject content,” Gomendio said.
The Spanish Supreme Court has amended by the Royal Decree before the start of the courses, to remove references to feelings and emotions, relationships between men and women, social prejudice, racist, xenophobic, or sexist, poverty in the world, the ‘feminization’ of, or exclusive nationalism as current problems among other issues.
Itineraries and weight of the subjects
Among the main novelties of the bill’s policy is the implementation of statewide assessments at the end of education in primary, secondary and high schools, as well as a test in 3rd grade for early detection of learning problems in students.
The Secundary Tittle for Education (ESO) and Baccalaureate tests will be needed to obtain a title to work. But some of the critical sectors called for “revalidation”, to replace the current selectivity, which is a test students must pass to be accepted in college.
In addition, the bill increases the capacity of the Ministry of Education to decide on the common content of class courses, while it gives freedom to schools and autonomies to do the same with external courses not categorized as important. Meanwhile, the workload will increase for subjects like Mathematics and the English Language.
A law of 400 million
As for the cost of the bill, although Wert said the bill would cost “cero”, the implementation and consolidation of such would take about 300 million euros. In January this year, the State addressed the costs to 408 million euros. 23 million in the first year, 130 in the second, and 255 in the third.
But could vary depending on the “success” in terms of drop outs. Both the School Board and the State Council warned of the need to provide sufficient resources to implement Werts Law.
In this regard, the bill provides for the creation LOMCE a Basic Training of two years, which will be compulsory and will replace the Initial Professional Qualification Programmes (PCPI), aimed at teenagers of age 15+. In addition, the Work Force Development Study (FP) will introduce middle grade, oriented professional sectors and facilitate the transition to higher level vocational training.
