The Ministry of Education is preparing to open negotiations with the employers of charter schools to update the funds that these private centers receive from the State. The ministry intends to comply with the provision contained in the educational law, the Lomloeapproved in 2020, which contemplates said review. The first step, the Secretary of State for Education explains to EL PAÍS, Abelardo de la Rosawill consist of objectively establishing what is “the real cost of the educational service” provided by concerted education, and from there the amounts received by the centers will be recalculated. Both sides assume that this will mean more money. Education expects, in parallel, a commitment to transparency in the admission processes and real gratuity of the charter school, that is, in the elimination of the mandatory fees charged by a good part of them.
This is a sensitive topic for several reasons. An important part of the defenders of public schools, politically close to the Government, are also in favor of eliminating or, at least, reducing the weight of concerted education, so that a step in the opposite direction, increasing public funds, will most likely generate rejection. Chartered schools also collect a large amount of money in fees outside the law. EsadeEcPol estimated it in 1,000 million a year in a report published in April. As a consequence of this and other tactics to select students in the admission processes used by many centers, Spain presents the largest socioeconomic gap among students in public and charter schools in the developed world, as Save the Children warned in a report published in September. Hence, the ministry wants to “analyze in depth” the issue of quotas and admission processes in concerted education, which enrolls 29% of students. The public welcomes 67% and the private, unsubsidized, 4%.
Additional provision number 29 of the Lomloe points out: “Within the Sectoral Conference, a commission will be established, in which the most representative business and union organizations in the field of private private education will participate, to study the amount of the concert modules that assesses the cost. total provision of teaching in free conditions. Its conclusions must be incorporated into the plan to increase public spending” that the same law plans to develop. The concerts are made up of three elements that are paid for by the administrations. One made up of teachers’ salaries and social security payments. Another that includes salary supplements (such as seniority), substitutions, and the salary of directors. And a third, operating, which includes costs such as administration and service personnel, maintenance and upkeep of the centers.
Studies such as those by Esade and Save the Children conclude that concerted education is underfunded – in line with what employers in the sector claim, the most important of which are Catholic Schools and Cece―, that is, the amounts they receive do not cover the cost of the educational service. But both reports contain important nuances. The first report, based on statistics from the INE, limits said underfinancing to 38% of subsidized centers. And it warns that, at the same time, between 15% and 17% of schools (depending on the educational stage) are not only well financed by the State, but also charge fees to families for concepts that clearly exceed the cost of the services. while they receive 1,250 million euros per year from the public coffers. The report concludes that withdrawing the concerts for failing to comply with the legislation would allow the administrations to more than cover what would have to be paid to the underfunded centers so that they would stop being underfunded: 240 million euros. The Save the Children report proposes, for its part, linking the improvement of public financing of subsidized schools to the percentage of students in a situation of socioeconomic vulnerability that each center hosts, as a way to tackle the great segregation based on income that It occurs between said school network and the public one.
“The ministry, and the rest of the administrations, have the obligation to guarantee the right to education, access under conditions of equality and non-discrimination and to ensure an adequate and balanced distribution among schools of students with specific needs for support.” educational. The concerted agreement cannot be an instrument of segregation of the students,” states the number two of Education citing Lomloe. And the fees, adds De la Rosa, are “an obstacle to guaranteeing schooling in these centers without discriminating against students with fewer economic possibilities.”
Four decades without working
The current model of concerted education was created in the mid-1980s under the premise that, in exchange for being subsidized by the State, private centers would offer free education and would not discriminate against students in schooling. Something that hasn’t happened. The Esade report, prepared by Lucas Gortazar, Ángel Martínez and Xavier Bonal, points out that non-compliance with the original mandate has continued until now due to the existence of a balance that offered those involved few incentives to change. The administration saved money by paying less than what it would mean to cover the entire educational service (although, according to the authors, underfinancing only affects 38% of schools); The centers had an excuse to collect money from families without the public authorities pursuing this illegal practice, and a portion of the families managed to “access centers with greater social selection” (that is, in many cases, without poor people or migrants). “in exchange for paying what for many is a modest co-payment.” Less in any case than what it would cost them to take their children to private, unsubsidized centers, as denounced by the latter’s employer, Cicae.
Improving financing can help, as Esade and Save the Children point out, to stop the concerted parties from charging fees and using tricks to select students (for example, giving priority in enrollment to the children of former students or to children who have attended to non-free stages, such as 0-3, from the same company or another with which they have established agreements). But achieving such a compromise will not be easy. To begin with, because its supervision would require, in principle, the involvement of the autonomous communities. And most of them are now governed by the PP, a party that has not been characterized by monitoring the concerted party, but rather by favoring it to the detriment of the public one.
