Cambray presents a new proposal to avoid another strike call.
The unions consider it insufficient and will not attend the sectoral table convened for this Thursday
new offer of the Department of Education to the teachers unions, after the breakdown of talks on Monday. In what is taking shape as the main union demand, the department of Josep González-Cambray has offered this Wednesday reverse, from the 2023-24 academic year, the teaching load of teachers from elementary school up to what they had before the 2012 cuts, that is, 23 hours a week. This offer supposes advancing the reversal one course with respect to what the Department had offered in its last proposal on Monday. In the case of secondary school, however, it maintains the recovery of teaching hours (18 hours per week) for the 2024-25 academic year. Offer that unions have considered insufficientso that they will not attend the meeting of the sectoral table that Educació had convened for this Thursday at 09:00.
Ustec, CCOO, Aspepc, Intersindical, UGT, CGT and Usoc require that that reversal is from next September, something that Educació sees as impossible due to the high economic cost. According to the proposal, recovering teaching hours would mean hiring 1,463 teachers in primary school, which has a cost of 67 million euros. In secondary, 2,009 teachers should be hired, at a cost of 103.3 million euros.
For the coming academic year, the proposal that Educació wanted to discuss this Thursday at the sectoral table provides reduce the ratio of students per classroom in P3 with a maximum of 20 students. Likewise, it also includes the substitutions of a third of a day are eliminated and become part-time. Implementing both measures would entail a cost of more than 45 million euros.
“Unacceptable” and “insulting”
The unions have received the proposal after 9:30 p.m. ahead of the sectoral meeting, convened at 09.00. “It’s not hours,” agreed the spokesmen, contacted by this newspaper. In fact, some member of the table received the email with the proposal after 10:00 p.m.
Joan Alis, spokesperson for Aspepc, has described as “insulting” this belated way of proceeding. “Is a disrespect total.” The spokeswoman for Ustec, Iolanda Segura, It has also considered a “contempt” the fact that some unions have found out about the proposal in the press beforehand. “One more proof of the spirit of this ‘ministry'”, they have criticized. Finding out about things through the press was precisely one of the reasons for the discomfort of the educational community with Cambray.
In a unitary statement, they have refused to give Educació a response to “proposals that do not adjust in time and form to a real negotiation”. “We will study future proposals from the Department as long as they give rise to a real negotiation, and not to look for media blows”, they added.
And they have announced that in the coming days they will evaluate the steps to be taken to “strengthen the unity of action” and give continuity to the fight for the improvement of education.
“no improvement”
Regarding the content, Segura points out that the offer is “unacceptable”. “There is no improvement. What they do not understand is that we want the recovery of teaching hours for this September, not for the end of the legislature.” Alis has stressed that the fact that Educació now offers to bring forward the recovery of school hours to 2023 only for primary and not for secondary is “a strategy to divide the unions.” “They make this offer that only benefits a teaching body to try to divide us. The unions are united and we have not entered the game,” he explained.
Everyone agrees that the offer does not include anything for the next course. Regarding the reduction of ratios in P3 and the elimination of thirds of the day to convert them into half days, the unions point out that these are measures that were already contemplated in the budgets, therefore they do not consider it an improvement or any concession.
Minister Cambray’s offer schedules various improvement measures. So for the academic year 2023-2024, in addition to the recovery of the teaching hour in infant and primary, proposes to reduce the ratios in P3 and P4. This will mean hiring 382 teachers at a cost of 17.5 million euros.
Related news
At academic year 2024-2025, the ratio reduction will also be extended to P5. 444 teachers would be hired, at a cost of 20.3 million euros. For this course, the teaching character of the two hours of reduction would also be returned to staff over 55 years of age. This would cost 33.9 million.
In this way, the cuts that were applied in the educational sector in 2012 would be practically reversed, in the midst of the economic crisis and with José Ignacio Wert as Minister of Education and Irene Rigau as ‘consellera’ of Ensenyament. The total of the measures proposed by Educació would be deployed, if accepted by the unions, for the next four years and would have an economic impact of almost 495 million of euros.