At nine in the morning this Monday, 700,000 infant and primary school students in Catalonia have returned to the classroom. In a beginning of the course marked by the advance of school calendar and the general rise in prices, at the gates of the schools hundreds of people gathered again students waiting to get in. Between sleepy faces, joy and the occasional cry -especially from the little ones-, there are many children who they return to the routine eagerly after long summer vacation.
at the gates of Josep Carner school in Badalona, Pablo, 11 years old, begins what will be his last year at school before going on to high school. This sixth-grade boy assures that he doesn’t like the summer holidays to end because “it’s better to go to the beach and the pool than to go to school”, but, on the other hand, he explains that the good thing about going back to class is that meet up with all your friends. “What I want most is to see all my friends. I’ve seen some of them this summer, but not others, so now I’ll see all of them. Also, although it’s better to be on vacation, I like school” , it states.
More lively is April, who is eight years old and starts third grade. “I really want to see the teachers, my friends and my friends from the dining room,” she says happily.
There are other children for whom going back to school is heavier. They think that the holidays are “too short” and they didn’t want to go back to school “so soon”. This is the case of Iker, 10 years old, who is honest about his real motivation: “I wanted to because I’m also starting football and I really like that”.
A complicated course for families
The beginning of this course is marked by the rise in prices. The shopping basket for school supplies has increased between 6% and 20% and services such as school canteen or extracurricular Prices have also increased. English, swimming, dancing or soccer are some of the most popular activities among the little ones and many families are already preparing to enroll their children in any of these activities. Some are finding it difficult to keep the children in the same activities as in previous years because everything has become too expensive.
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Mariela Ávila has two children aged eleven and four and explains that luckily her children eat with their grandparents every day and she and her husband do not have to bear the cost of the dining room, but she also regrets that this year her eldest son will only be able to an extra-schoolr due to the cost of making everything more expensive. “This year, for the moment, the oldest will only do English and we will sign up the little one for swimming. This year everything is going up and we have valued signing them up for something that they really need,” explains the woman.
Along the same lines, Alicia Poblete, mother of two children aged sixteen and sixteen, assures that this week she will enroll the children in an extracurricular activity. “This week I have to go and sign them up so they don’t run out of places, especially in swimming, which is the extracurricular activity that we all sign our children up for,” Alicia stresses.