The Minister of Education and Vocational Training, Pilar Alegríahas urged the autonomous communities to act in the case of concerted schools to collect fees from families through educational inspection and has recalled compliance with the lomloe which expressly prohibits the payment of installments.
“The law is a very clear organic law and states that all families have the right to a free education and if this is not the case, the autonomous communities, through the inspection, have to act”, explained the head of Education in an interview on Radiocable collected by Europa Press when asked by the Study of Fees and Prices of Concerted Schools prepared by the Spanish Confederation of Associations of Parents of Students (CEAPA) and the Association of Private and Independent Schools (CICAE), according to which, 90% of the concerted centers charge fees for compulsory education.
On the possibility that it is the Ministry that acts in the event of possible breaches of the law, Alegría recalled that the Government has transferred competences in educational matters to the autonomous communities, with the exception of Ceuta and Melilla. “The issues we raise with the communities is collaborative work; they are the ones who have autonomy in educational matters”added the minister.
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Regarding the implementation of the welfare coordinator that Lomloe also contemplates, Alegría has ensured that the majority of the autonomous communities “have implemented it within their educational planning and others will implement it”.
The minister has also referred to the ratios in the classrooms and has defended the improvement of the teacher/student ratios to guarantee “a more personalized education and more resources for teachers; if this is what we want to achieve, we have to see how we can improve the teacher-student ratio, which is not very different from the number of students per classroom”, stated Alegría.
With this objective, it has encouraged the autonomous communities that have registered a drop in birth rates to take advantage of the circumstance to reduce the ratios. “We have proposed that they take advantage of this drop in the birth rate, which in no case becomes a reduction in teachers,” she concluded.