The non-university educational sector in the Valencian Community is on a war footing. The majority teaching union, STEPV, together with CC OO and UGT and associations of directors and parents have organized various mobilizations for next week. And it is not ruled out to call a new general strike after the one on May 23 for the call Educational Freedom Lawwhich the PP and Vox approved before the ultra formation left the Generalitat. Education brings together around 68,000 teachers and 802,000 students at these levels. Discontent spreads among professionals and parents.
There are three main fronts open before the Ministry of Education, directed by the popular Juan Antonio Rovira, and one of them derives directly from the application of the controversial law: the choice of the students’ base language for the next course through a vote to which families are called between November 26 and December 4. The other two are the lack of hiring of teachers to cover sick leave (around 80 centers suffer from this lack, according to union figures) and, above all, the failure to comply with the staffing agreement agreed with the previous left-wing government, which was in place, signed last year with all the unions, under which the Generalitat was going to hire 3,200 teachers for the 2023-24 academic year and about 1,900 for 2024-25.
Next Tuesday, the aforementioned unions have called a rally in front of the Ministry of Finance to protest the lack of personnel and demand agility for the replacement of teaching staff, educational support and the administrative area. The next day, there is another concentration in front of the ministry for the “immediate application of the squad agreements and the awarding of all substitutions.” Finally, the Platform in Defense of Public Education, made up of unions and numerous left-wing associations, calls for demonstrations in Castelló, Valencia and Alicante on Saturday, November 16 in defense of public schools, to reject the consultation and ask better infrastructure and more teachers.
The three unions and the opposition, formed by the PSPV-PSOE and Compromís, maintain that, beneath these problems, lies the PP’s will to reduce the teaching of Valencian and the economic resources allocated to public education through measures that stop or They delay the hiring of personnel as the course progresses, while increasing the funds to the concerted company, whose allocation for other expenses, for example, has been frozen for 10 years, according to Rovira himself this summer.
On Friday, official Education sources denied to this newspaper the thesis that the left attributes to the PP’s usual educational policy of withdrawing funds from the public: “This course has started with 82,180 teachers (those from the concerted system are included), which It represents an increase of 533 public teachers compared to last year. The ratios have been lowered in 69 municipalities, with special attention to depopulated areas, where the ratio has been lowered from 6 to 4 students in order to keep centers open. And in terms of school arrangements, not only have the 69 units that the Botànic eliminated in its last year been recovered, but 35 more have been created.”
One day after the May strike, the department announced that it was denouncing the staff agreement and, therefore, the hiring of the second round of teachers. The STEPV and CC OO took the non-compliance to the Superior Court of Justice of the Valencian Community, which ruled in their favor. He ruled and then confirmed the precautionary suspension of the Generalitat’s complaint. Education has asked the court for clarification on how to execute its resolutions.
This setback for the department was known shortly before the dismissals at the request of the general director of Teaching Personnel, Sonia Sancho, and the deputy director of this area, José Pascual. The counselor dissociated the resignations from the judicial order, pointing out that they were previously planned and recalled that both officials had a start to the school year “with many problems” last year, due to incidents in the adjudication process, which he attributed to the “ heritage” of the Botànic. The class unions and the opposition agree in considering that the two dismissals represent the “disaster” of the PP’s educational policy.
This past week, Education proposed a new template agreement to the unions of the Sectorial Board. Marc Candela, from the STE, pointed out on Thursday that the Ministry had “threatened” that, if they request the application of the orders, “the 3,200 jobs that were applied in the 2023-24 academic year do not have to be maintained in the new order of templates that you are preparing for the next course.” “We are not going to accept threats,” he assured, after announcing that the union has already requested this execution to “apply the missing part of the agreements, which were those 1,900 teachers.” The union is not closed and understands that this figure could be adjusted downwards, to close to a thousand, but insists that the agreement must be fulfilled.
Negotiation
This Friday, the ministry insisted on its original argument to denounce the template agreements: “The Botànic agreement was signed while in office and the Generalitat Attorney’s Office considered that it was null. This Consell has already applied that agreement by 80% and has shown its willingness to establish a negotiation with the unions for a stable and lasting staff agreement.”
In this sense, the former regional Secretary of Education of the Generalitat, Miguel Soler, remembers that when the leftist government came to power in 2015, the same day that Ximo Puig took office as president, the agreement was published in the DOGV. of the teaching staff signed with the unions by the then Minister of Education of the PP, María José Catalá, today mayor of Valencia. “Staff regulations always compromise the next government,” he says.
For its part, the Confederation of AMPA Gonzalo Anaya and the Association of Directors of Children and Primary Schools of the Public School of the Valencian Country (ADEP-PV) have requested the withdrawal of the consultation with families about the base language for “not guarantee a place in the chosen option” because when the demand is met in one unit, the students will be transferred to another even if it is not taught in the chosen language, and because “it would alter the learning and adaptation process of the students” as the vehicular language from one course to another. Both also agree in criticizing the “unattainable organizational and bureaucratic burden” for insufficient administrative staff “to manage this type of procedures,” the directors argue.
The ministry reiterates its position: “This Government is doing what it promised in its electoral program: giving families freedom of choice, and that is being fulfilled. The guarantees are total and the places in Spanish or Valencian will come from what the families choose.”
