After a week of vacancy, the government has a new Minister of Education. Milagros Tolón, former mayor of Toledo, has only one mission for the rest of the legislature: to approve the status of teachers. If he succeeds, he will be able to consider his stay on Alcalá Street in Madrid as a good thing, according to the sector’s unions. As an added bonus, you’ll score points for being there. If, unlike its predecessor, it has a “presence” and speaks with the parties, a priori disparate organizations such as the CSIF, the CCOO or the Catholic Schools, the employers’ association of the Church which manages its educational centers, agrees.
With Tolón, a mini tradition of recent years is broken: the three previous ministers of Education, including the outgoing Alegría, were also spokespersons for the government in place, recalls the CSIF. A significant fact about the value that presidents give to this ministry, says Mario Gutiérrez, responsible for Education of the union: “The spokesperson is a very complex function that requires preparation, and which makes the ministry secondary. Alegría has been spokesperson, minister and candidate (in the elections of Aragon, which is why she left Education) and of the three, I think the ministry is the one that interested her the least”, he affirms. This criticism cannot be directed at the new manager.
But the public school is not the only one to believe that Alegría was absent at the end of her stay in Education. “Concerted education felt neglected, particularly due to the absence of stable spaces for dialogue and working meetings with the ministry,” affirm the Catholic schools. “We think people leave without understanding public school and its professionals,” says Teresa Esperabé, education manager at CCOO. The conservative-leaning Anpe union hopes “that the Government appoints a person who places among its priorities the promotion and approval of the status of teachers; an interlocutor with political will and the capacity for dialogue and negotiation is essential.”
In general, Alegría fails. “Their work is not approved at all,” assesses the CSIF. “It doesn’t go far enough,” recognizes CCOO. “This leaves fundamental commitments unresolved,” says Anpe, less wet. The evaluation of Catholic schools is “clearly critical due to the lack of progress and dialogue.”
Three steps
The idea is circulating in the sector that the Ministry of Education had entered a phase of inactivity in recent years which it only recently abandoned to tackle the negotiation of teacher status.
During these years of Pedro Sánchez’s government, the department experienced three different stages. The first years were intense around the negotiation, processing and subsequent approval of the Lomloe, the educational law that put an end to the despised Lomce – by the majority of the parliamentary arc – of the PP. This process, led by Isabel Celaá and completed by Alegría, was marked by great wear and tear on all sides: there were serious clashes with the employers of subsidized education, who took to the streets because of the alleged attack that the law validated against this model (an attack that turned out to be without many consequences), but also with a left that criticized the executive for not going far enough in limiting certain practices of subsidized private centers (time has shown, for example, that the law has not succeeded in putting an end to the transfer of public lands to concerted centers, one of its objectives).
This intensive period was followed by a certain paralysis of activity. The reform of FP and arts education was approved, of course, but these regulations did not have the symbolic and ideological weight of the Basic Law on Education – they were approved with virtually no votes against – nor did they have time to be deployed. The reform of Selectivity to adapt it to Lomloe generated more tensions, but as the ministry did not have to agree with anyone, it was able to carry it out without major complications.
In recent months, Education has resumed its activities to try to finally approve the long-awaited status of teaching (by teachers), a standard which must regulate the teaching career and which professionals have been waiting for 30 years, according to the unions. The text, or the various texts – Education has decided to approve the standard in parts as agreements are reached – must address issues such as initial training (notably the reform of the teaching diploma and the master’s degree in secondary education), access to the profession (competition) or the development of a teaching career which, for the moment, offers few incentives to its professionals.
Alegría can boast of leaving behind two issues that have a direct impact on the classroom and that have been demanded for years by teachers: student ratios per class or weekly teaching hours (direct teaching). After a negotiation during which the ministry listened to at least some of the union demands, the Council of Ministers approved on November 11 the bill aimed at lowering these two aspects. Fewer students in each class and fewer classes to prepare and teach should allow teachers to directly improve their professional situation once approved.
But that’s all. Since this reform was accepted, negotiations have been paralyzed, the unions regret. “This was going to be the ‘teachers’ legislature’ and teachers continue to this day to be the most forgotten part of the legislature,” says CCOO.
What is missing
Ratios and teaching hours are only the beginning, as teacher representative organizations remind us. CCOO lists all the outstanding questions within the framework of the statute: that all teaching staff raise their level to group A1 on the civil servant scale; early, voluntary and incentive retirement; specific regulations for teachers regarding occupational health, including psychosocial risks; improvement of initial training; ongoing training with resources and during working hours; a “real professional career, attractive, articulate and well motivated”; review of admission and access with emphasis on educational aspects with a practical phase with resources, truly educational and well planned; specification of teaching staff functions to avoid accumulation of tasks and excessive bureaucracy; and the improvement and upward standardization of teachers’ remuneration and working conditions, lists the union.
Apart from the statute, the government has a strong commitment to promoting vocational training, a step which, under this government, has probably removed the label of poor sister of the university, or the first cycle of early childhood, from zero to three years, a step which reaches historic heights in terms of enrollment, but which presents a strong inequality in terms of access.
But this commitment, reinforced by the injection of billions of euros, has not succeeded in reversing or at least stopping the strong privatization of the two stages, where a good part of the supply continues to be private due to the strong demand to which public administrations do not respond.
Catholic Schools add to the list of debts the broken promise to study the real cost of the school post, a historic request from employers’ associations agreed for the government to update the module that pays to private centers in exchange for the integration of their educational services into the public network, a “public promise” that the ministry made but never kept.
Statistics in favor… half
Some statistics favor Alegría, even if only half. For example, investment, which after years of stagnation following the budget cuts following the crisis of the 2010s, finally returned in 2020 to the absolute figures it had presented in 2008 and has soared over the last five years, largely under his mandate.
Between 2021, Alegría’s entry date, and 2023, the latest data available, education spending increased from 59.772 million euros to 68.065 million euros, an increase of 13.8% to reach the highest position in the history of the country. The data are worse if we analyze them, as established by international comparisons, in relation to GDP: there the evolution is negative, from 4.84% to 4.54%, far from the 7% demanded by certain unions and which mark the figure of the countries which invest the most. The minister also gave a boost to the stock markets. At its entry, 2.150 million euros were distributed, this year the amount rises to 2.544 million, an increase of 18%.
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