The Community of Madrid is the region with the greatest educational discrimination in Spain and one of the highest in Europe, this is how it collects the report. School segregation, an unresolved social justice problem: analysis and proposalspresented by the Comisiones Obreras union. Concerted and private education mainly concentrates the majority of students in this autonomy, while schooling in public centers falls to 54%, compared to 67% of the national media, according to data from the 2022-2023 sector. In Spain, 24.79% of students go to concerts and 8.26% to private schools.
The report focuses on the uncontrolled expansion of business and education in the Community of Madrid and the “alarming” reduction in the number of students in public centers. Also in the transfer of labor from the Administration to companies for the construction of private centers, a practice that began in this autonomy with the government of Esperanza Aguirre and that continues today despite the plans in the opposite direction recognized in the LOMLOE.
The latest available data, referring to 2022 and for students in compulsory secondary education, indicate that the average school segregation for the entire Spanish state is 0.36, slightly lower for socio-economically disadvantaged students than for the most advantaged. These figures hide a great variability of data from different communities and autonomous cities. Thus, for the most disadvantaged students (25% of students from families with fewer resources), the Community of Madrid with an index of 0.42 differs significantly from the region with greater segregation in Spain. Follow the autonomous city of Melilla, Catalonia and Asturias.
The figures show that this great dispersion observed between the different communities and autonomous cities means that some find themselves among the least segregated in Europe and others, particularly in the Community of Madrid, among the most segregated. Spain as a whole is in a medium-low position among European countries, behind France or Italy, and even behind Portugal. However, the Community of Madrid is at the top of the list, behind certain Eastern European countries, such as Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Bulgaria, which come first. rankingbut with much greater segregation than France, Italy, Portugal or the United Kingdom.
The Obreras Commissions criticize the educational policies of schooling in the Community of Madrid, which introduced market logics such as competition, election, supply or demand, within a system which remains public. Families of low socioeconomic status predominate in the neighborhood, while those belonging to the middle and upper classes may move out.
In school zoning systems, based on the division of a city or territory into educational zones or zones, and the allocation to each family of a reference center according to their household, it is more complex to leave the designated school. However, the Community of Madrid offers a single school zone for each municipality, including the capital itself, with very reduced zoning situations, approaching the center, according to the Obreras Commissions report.
The single zone, incapable of guaranteeing the principle of election of educational centers supported by public funds for families, in the case of very large municipalities like many in the Community of Madrid, makes it difficult to elect a school center for homes with fewer resources, under the jurisdiction of the union, which recalls that this autonomy is also where the most religious and private university centers are located in Spain, “and in the coming years four more will open, according to the popular Madrid executive”.
The concerted system welcomes far fewer immigrant, disadvantaged or lacking educational needs students. The total amount of its actions in Spain is between 950 and 1,200 million euros for internships from 3 to 16 years old. The three autonomous communities which concentrate 70% are Catalonia, Madrid and the Basque Country, being in turn those with the most students enrolled in this educational network and the most profitable. Data collected by the union report extracted from the 2024 study The cost of access to concert school in Spain: the fees paid by families and their causesby Xavier Bonal, Ángel Martínez and Lucas Gortázar.
Comissiones Obreras regrets that none of the plans analyzed seriously proposes to put an end to the economic tasks of the concerted centers, taking into account their public financing. According to a study published by the Spanish Confederation of Associations of Fathers and Mothers of Graduates and the Association of Private and Independent Colleges, 87% charge monthly fees, which amount to 129.10 euros for the average rate in the Community of Madrid.
“We are concerned by the fact that all private centers constitute, behind residential segregation, the greatest source of discrimination based on socio-economic origin in Spain and much higher than that of neighboring countries, explaining on average 19.2% of school segregation and reaching 32.8% in the Community of Madrid,” reports Comisiones Obreras.
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