Appointed ‘councillor’ of Education a few days after the end of last year, Simó begins her first school year at the head of the Department on September 6 with a desk full of folders with pending issues and a strike called for the first day of class
-Do you see time to stop the strike called for the first day of school?
-My objective is not to stop strikes. My goal is to be able to have a frank relationship and dialogue about every educational policy decision. The last time I met with the unions they asked me for a schedule that I already told them I couldn’t meet; I can’t come up with a budget. They know my goal is to reverse the cuts, but my schedule and theirs don’t add up. They asked me to reach an agreement before September 6, and I don’t know how to prepare the budget scenarios for 2024 as of September 6.
“I am not considering banning mobile phones in the courtyards, it is a decision that each center must make”
-So, your first course will start with a strike?
-I will never tell them to call off a strike, nor will I speak to them through the media. We have to talk at the sector table.
-They have one on Tuesday, the day before the start of the course, but the scenario has not changed since the last meeting. Do you have something new to bring to the table?
-The table is summoned to talk about the beginning of the course, just as I have asked the president of the School Council of Catalonia to convene a plenary session or the Parliament to appear before the Education commission. Therefore, I want to meet with the sectoral table before the start of the course, but not with the aim of calling off any strike. “Call off a strike” will never come out of my mouth in front of a union. For many reasons, and I could talk about personal causes. I am now an employer, but I have not always been. I have been in a works council. I defend the right to strike and I am very clear that there were some cuts and that they must be reversed.
-In fact, that attitude was one of the reasons for your appointment as replacement for Josep Gonzàlez-Cambray. He urged to calm the waters.
-That would have to be discussed with the ‘president’. Each ‘conseller’ has a way of doing things, but I will not get tired of repeating the great work that has been done in recent years within the framework of the Department. With the ‘minister’ Bargalló, with the ‘minister’ Gonzàlez-Cambray and with all his team.
I defend the right to strike and I am very clear that there were some cuts and that they must be reversed
-Last course began with the great novelty of the introduction of the free I-2, which was announced as a first step towards the total free infant school; so much so that the families assumed that this course would continue with the free I-1 this course, but it has not been the case.
-This course is the consolidation of the free I-2. The context always impacts us more than we wanted, and we have had a context of municipal elections in June. There is a mixed commission, for relations with the local world, where all matters relating to local powers are discussed. They appointed me on June 12 and I would have liked to have been able to convene this mixed commission during the month of July; but the town councils were not yet constituted. And when the town councils were constituted, the Provincial Councils were not constituted, so we have not yet been able to meet.
-When they do, will you put a date on the table?
-I have to discuss it with the local world. On the one hand, I don’t have the budgets, but, for me, the priority is to discuss it first with the municipalities. Make an evaluation of the implementation of the I-2 together with the municipalities and make decisions.
We do not have a date for the free I-1; It is something that must be discussed with the municipalities
-Another topic that you have in hand with the local world is the air conditioning of the schools. Last year, Cambray presented a plan that was met with criticism from both families and teachers. Do you propose any new measures?
-I want to start my answer with a positive look. Until this April there had been no political will in this Department to make a plan and the ‘councillor’ Cambray had the will and did it. This implies first making a diagnosis and deciding in which centers to work. We have already defined how many centers have some air conditioning done: 41% of institutes and 16% of schools. Now we are doing center-by-center audits.
So, continue with the plan presented in April. No news?
-What the ‘councillor’ Cambray raised and I now want to put on the table of the mitxa commission is: ‘city councils, what do you need to be able to carry out the part that corresponds to the schools?’. We can talk if they consider that they are competences that pertain to them or not; that I defend that things like putting clothes lines in a patio and, when possible, reforesting a patio, that is a municipal competence; But if we get together we’ll finish sooner.
Putting clotheslines and, when possible, reforesting a school yard is a municipal responsibility
-The TSCJ issued three harsh sentences in July in which it referred to the law on language use in schools as unconstitutional. This law is appealed in the TC; Do Catalan families have to suffer from the Catalan school model?
-While this Government is what it is, they do not have to suffer for that. I will not stop repeating the need for the separation of powers. A TSJC cannot say how we have to govern education in the country and less in linguistic matters. How we manage the use of Catalan in the centers is strictly our responsibility.
-Do you have a plan in case the TC declared the law unconstitutional?
-It does not fall within the assumptions that the Constitutional Law says that Law 8/2022 is not constitutional. Moreover, the council of statutory guarantees endorsed it. It is an absolutely constitutional law.
-Yes, but the latest sentences of the TSJC say otherwise…
-It is not the TSJC who has to decide if a law is constitutional or not. The Department will explain in front of whoever is needed that our objective is that Catalan students know the official languages and a foreign language when they finish compulsory schooling. And, here, the linguistic competences that are at risk are Catalan and Aranese, as has already been seen and as will be seen in the analysis of the results of the basic competences.
-Have you already analyzed the results of last year?
-We are working, but from the intuition that I have as a graduate in Catalan Philology and language normalization technician for more than 30 years, and as the mother of a child who is doing sixth grade in a public school in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, if there is any knowledge that is not sufficiently established, in general and, above all, in some areas of the country, it is oral and written Catalan.
-As for the written language… the latest data on reading comprehension were devastating.
-These bad results are not from now. PIRLS in 2016 was already bad. This is one of the issues that I have discussed with the Central Board of Directors and we have created a working group; and the Directorate General for Innovation is working hard from the didactic point of view: how we teach in the centers and how we work so that the students acquire a good reading comprehension. This is the most transversal competition there is because it affects the overall results.
-It does not seem unreasonable to link this decrease in reading comprehension with the abuse of screens. Are you considering the possibility of converting the patios of the institutes into mobile-free spaces?
-There is a question that is the concept of autonomy of the center. There are centers that prohibit the entry of mobile phones, but that is a matter that must be included in the operating regulations of each center. These decisions have to be discussed and worked within the school council of each center. And, on the other hand, the entry of mobile phones into the centers is not bad per se. There is a prior question here, which is training in the proper use of mobile phones, in which families also have to participate.
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-Would you like Catalonia to be an example of mobile-free schoolyards?
-No. What I would like is for Catalonia to be an example for having school councils where families and teachers can make decisions like that based on evidence; but that this is not a debate that comes from top to bottom. It doesn’t work vertically.