He course started in the Community of Madrid on September 5, but “tens of thousands of students” are without textbooks at the end of October, when they are already facing the first exams of the term, according to parents, management teams and CC OO, which They denounce that there has been a “completely generalized delay” in the book loan program Access. However, the regional government minimizes its impact: it only admits “specific difficulties of some schools” in purchasing “some copies” from the bookstores that supply them. The union speaks of a “very serious” problem that has caused discomfort in the educational community, since “it is a great irresponsibility that the books arrive late and an example of the disarray in the management that exists in Education.”
Access was born in 2017, when Law 7/2017 of July 27 was published to establish a system of free loan of books and materials to Primary, ESO and Basic Vocational Training students in public and subsidized centers. However, the plan, to which the centers and students voluntarily join, It did not start until 2019-2020. “This academic year (2024-2025) has a budget of 41.6 million and reaches more than 500,000 students, with 1,466 participating centers, 1,179 public and 287 subsidized,” indicates an Education spokesperson. That is, less than half of the total of 3,229 centers and 67% of the 736,538 students of those stages. The previous year the budget was increased by 25.2% with an additional 12.6 million euros to a total of 62.6 million.
In this system, it is the centers that buy the books and create a bank, which is renewed every four courses, in addition to replacing lost or damaged copies annually. To enter, “students must hand in all of the previous year’s papers in perfect condition, which allows the bank to continue. The only exception is those for 1st and 2nd grade, which are not reusable and are purchased every year,” explains the spokesperson. This does not mean that it is completely free, since families assume the cost of the activity booklets and other materials. For example, a family with a Primary child can spend about 150 euros a year, compared to 550 euros for a child who is not in the program.
Among those students who are still waiting for the books are Ana Hortal’s children, a girl in 6th grade and a boy in 4th grade at the Calvo Sotelo school in the capital. This family is in Access “from the beginning it worked well until last year, when there was already a delaybut it was bearable because the first weeks are for review.” A little late, at the beginning of October, but the books arrived. Not this course. As informed by the AMPA and the center’s management, eight bookstores reached the end of the tender and all eight refused to keep it “due to the cost of the English and Spanish books.” sciencewhich generated losses for them.” According to this mother, the Community’s scholarship department, which is in charge of the program, did not respond, so the school has chosen to change the publisher for those books and they have found a bookstore that wants to take on the order. “They have told us that they will arrive this week or next,” says Hortal. And how are they managing? “There are books in the classrooms, but since they don’t have enough for everyone, they can’t take them home. The teachers have readapted, they post summaries in the virtual classrooms, they make a lot of cards, but it is a patch,” says this mother.
“The books started arriving last week, but there are still tens of thousands of people affected,” confirms Isabel Galvín, Secretary of Education at CC OO Madrid. “In this issue, as in many others, there is a tremendous lack of planning, totally unrelated to school times,” he denounces, pointing out that what happened is due to two causes. “The program instructions for this course arrived very late, on Friday, July 26, so the management teams had to spend part of their vacation month, in August, planning and preparing the awarding of the books to the companies,” he indicates. . This delay “has conditioned the entire process in terms of deadlines.” “It should be done in June at the latest,” claims CC OO.
The second element is that “the conditions imposed by the department are bad”, so the majority of successful bidders “resign because it is not profitable for them.” “It has been very difficult for the centers to find someone to supply them with books, so they started the course without books in general with very few exceptions,” says Galvín. The draconian conditions of the Community have been a “setback for local businesses and for the centers themselves, which prefer to work with neighborhood businesses,” explains Galvín. It has also caused a major disruption to the management teams, who have not yet resolved an essential procedure at the beginning of the course, and an ordeal for parents and students, who do not have physical or virtual books.
The Education spokesperson admits that “some schools have had specific difficulties in purchasing some copies from the companies that supply them,” but does not estimate the number. Given this situation, the department “has contacted them and offered them instructions so that they can acquire them as quickly as possible”, instructions that are not detailed either. The spokesperson adds that “all centers” participating in the program “have received the budget in a timely manner.”
For CC OO Madrid, Accede has four big problems: its “absolutely insufficient endowment”its poor planning, which does not reach all students and leaves out late additions. “There is enormous concern in centers that have enrollment open for the entire course. For example, there is an institute in Vallecas that has already received 90 unexpected students and there are cases of 30, 20, 10… And they are usually minors from disadvantaged families who cannot afford to cut the books,” explains Galvín.
This is the case of the Rivas Vaciamadrid Infant and Primary school run by Diego, who did not want to give his real name because the regional government has “forbidden” teachers to speak to the press, except for prior authorization, which usually does not arrive. “This year we have more newly enrolled students than ever, 23 have arrived, of which eight or nine could not enter the program and we have paid for their books from the center. The rest comes from other towns in the community and was already incorporated into the plan,” he explains. Diego had to bid on the lots “at the end of August and from his home computer”, with “the enormous luck” that they had no “resignations” and he was awarded “a stationery store two blocks away” from the school.
In his opinion, the program can be “improved” and he prefers “what existed before, the book check, with Accede they are charging the neighborhood bookstores”, in addition to the fact that “it is very complicated for a Primary child to keep” books that precisely “come prepared to be written, with exercises.” The design of the plan “involves a lot of burden and responsibility” for the management teams, who are in charge of “everything” and receive “all the complaints from parents because they have a page torn out or underlined.” On the other hand, mother Ana Hortal is delighted and, despite her poor performance in this course, will continue at Accede. “We have to fight for it, it is a good program that educates children in responsibility and recycling, it is good on an economic, ecological, pedagogical and educational level,” he says.
