The Provincial Union of Teaching of CCOO de Córdoba shows his concern and discomfort for the effects that the schooling decree of the Board for the next course is leaving in the Cordoba public educational network and especially its effects on the situation of rural public schools from the province.
The union has recalled through a statement that last year the measures of the Ministry of Education implied the closure of several units in these centers and that this year the Board has gone a step further with the total closure of the Quercus Azuel rural school in Venta del Charco (Cardeña).
“We understand that the maintenance of this type of center not only presents educational advantages. Its existence also fix the population to the territory. The loss of a school, therefore, is also a direct attack on their populations, condemning them for the lack of a future and pushing their inhabitants to migration ”, points out the head of Public Education of CCOO de Córdoba, Francisco Cobos, who criticizes the statements of the Board in which it states that “the relocation of students to another school that has specialists from each area and with a greater endowment of resources will significantly improve the quality of education offered to students , as well as its socialization ”. For CCOO, this statement should be understood as a contempt for the education offered by rural schools and the teachers who, with their work, slow down the advance of the so-called “emptied Spain”.
Another effect of the schooling decree is the closing lines in public centers. One of the first observations that can be made is that ignores the subsidiary nature of the concerted educational network with respect to the public. In fact, it turns them into complementary (if not already antagonistic) networks. “The model that this Decree proposes, in practice, condemns public centers to be the only ones to suffer enrollment fluctuations. Since the educational concerts are shielded for 4 years, while the public centers renew the existence of their units year after year. Therefore, the argument for the decrease in the birth rate hides a clear political intention to benefit the concerted network, ”Cobos remarks.
And this is how statements such as the one made by the Minister of Education should be understood, Javier Imbroda, during the inauguration of the CEIP Turruñuelos in Córdoba on the 22nd: “Each year units are closed due to the notable decrease in the birth rate”. “What Mr. Imbroda intentionally omits is that this closure only affects public centers,” says the union official.
These closures are so many that it is difficult to list all the centers with line closures both last year and this year (the two years that this decree has been in force). CCOO highlights this year the closure of CEIP Lucano, which has succumbed to the pressure of the Cervantes school’s armored concert. Last year the CEIP Moreno de Pedrajas, from Villanueva de Córdoba, closed. In addition, there are closures of lines (both last year and this year) in centers such as CEIP Algafequi, CEIP Caballeros de Santiago, CEIP Hernán Ruiz, CEIP Concepción Arenal, CEIP Alcalde Jiménez Ruiz and in IES such as Gran Capitán or Luis de Góngora, to cite just a few examples from the city of Córdoba. And to mention towns, there are the cases of Nueva Carteya or Espejo.
But in addition to the closure of lines, and even centers, highlights the Board attitude when it comes to “threatening”. The last case is that of the CEIP Colón. The same administration that communicates to the center the closure of a children’s line, announces a few days later that it was only “a proposal pending review.” “We do not want to be badly thought out, but there are several cases in which the Education Delegation rectifies its decision after it was made public and raised protests from the entire educational community, which makes us think that the delegate of Education in Córdoba, Inmaculada Troncoso, launches probe balloons to see how far it can go and then to be able to say ‘things have not been so bad’, but it is, ”insists Francisco Cobos.
By last, “We must end the fallacy of ‘freedom of choice’. This concept is used by some employers of concerted centers for the imposition of an ideology. Imposition of an ideology financed with public money. From the Provincial Union of Education of CCOO Córdoba we are firmly and decisively committed to a model of public management of the centers financed with public money from education and we will not tolerate even one more cut in public education ”, warns the union official.
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