The Minister of Education, Josep Gonzàlez Cambray, yesterday put on the table of the School Council of Catalonia, that brings together the representatives of the different sectors of the educational community, the proposal of advance the start of the school year to September 5 in infant and primary and September 7 in secondary. And it seems unlikely that he will reconsider: faced with the call for a five-day strike with the new calendar as a trigger, González Cambray has rejected the alternative of subjecting him to a one-year moratorium that has been proposed to him by the School Council.
The unions calling the strike sustain that the advance in a week of the start of classes it’s just one of the reasons of a call that is due to a sum of diverse grievances: among them, the distrust about the department’s promise that appointments of teaching teams will be ready in July, which would land part of the teaching teams in the centers two days before the start of classes, so that the advance occurs just when some new resumes in secondary school that at this time have not yet been approved or the requirement of the C2 level of Catalan. A series of disagreements fueled by discomfort with many components unrelated to the goodness or complications of the proposed new calendar, such as the accumulated wear and tear due to the complex management of the pandemic and the uncertainty caused by curricular changes, or (in a part of the group, especially in secondary school) due to their discrepancy with them. Although all of them were already present before the calendar proposal activated the mobilization.
Another thing is to what extent the families share the approach of the organizers of the strike and if the support by the largest organization that represents them, the aFFac, really reflects a state of majority opinion. It is quite reasonable to conclude that a large part of the parents of the students do not see a major problem (or rather they support it) in the start of school activity as soon as possible after a summer break slightly cropped.
There are compelling reasons for keep changing the school calendar in the direction to which the proposal for the 2022-23 academic year points. From the point of view pedagogical, that of progressively reducing a summer vacation that disconnects students from school for too long. From the one of the equal opportunities, the evidence that it is the students who have fewer alternatives in their family environment (care, or access to extra-academic training resources) who are most affected by this hiatus. And also from the conciliation, since despite the argument that the school is not a nursery, it is also true that contribute to the compatibility of work, family and academic schedules it is not one from which the school can be considered alien.
There are complications. But they should be surmountable if the agility (for many surprising) with which the appointments of substitutes have been managed during the pandemic becomes effective also for have the templates ready for the next course, if the promise is kept complement the intensive day throughout the month of September with extracurricular activities financed by Educació or if the requirements for implementing the new curricula are realistic (whose calendar, given the current positions, is more likely to be the one that Educació is willing to relax). The teachers are obviously in their perfect right to maintain the strike call. But by making the bringing forward of classes in September the central battle horse of their proposal, they run the risk of disconnecting from the interests of a significant part of the educational community.