Government, CCAA, educational community and rectors are inclined not to delay classes after holidays and defend presence
MADRID, 3 (EUROPA PRESS)
The ministries of Health, Education and FP and Universities will hold a joint meeting with the regional councilors this Tuesday, January 4, to analyze the return to the classroom after the Christmas holidays. Thus, the Interterritorial Council of the National Health System (CISNS) will hold an extraordinary meeting together with the Education Sector Conference and the General Conference on University Policy.
The meeting will be at 09:00 in La Moncloa and the three responsible ministers, Carolina Darias, Pilar Alegría, and Joan Subirats, will report the appointment at a press conference that will be held from 12:30 pm, as reported by the Executive .
The position of the Government, the educational community and, in general, of the autonomous communities, is not to delay the ‘return to school’ after the Christmas holidays. Neither are the rectors for the work.
Extremadura was the first autonomy that opened the debate by advancing that it would request a meeting to discuss the issue during the last Interterritorial Health Council in order to agree on a common strategy.
For now, the presidents of Castilla y León and Castilla-La Mancha have refused to delay the ‘return to school’, and governments such as Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, Asturias, La Rioja, Galicia, the Valencian Community, Cantabria and Navarra have already assured that the return to classes will not be delayed, staying on the scheduled dates, for January 10.
Other regions remain on the lookout, such as the Community of Madrid and Murcia. Regarding Madrid, its Minister of Health, Enrique Ruiz Escudero, has indicated that the regional government will wait “a little longer” to make the decision on how the ‘back to school’ will be after the Christmas holidays, although said region announced ago a few days that, in the event of sporadic cases, quarantines will not be carried out in educational centers.
Meanwhile, the Minister of Health of Murcia, Juan José Pedreño, has said that it is a process that must remain in the hands of data on the evolution of the incidence and the cases that are occurring. Andalusia, for its part, plans to return to school in person, except at alert level 3 and from 3rd year of ESO.
EDUCATION COMMITTED TO PRESENTIALITY
The Ministry of Health is the one who has competence to decide what measures should be carried out at the health level in educational centers, but these measures have to be dealt with jointly with Education, as has been done since the beginning of the pandemic.
The last joint meeting between both Departments with the councilors of each region took place at the end of May. At this meeting, which was convened to address the start of the 2021-2022 school year, it was agreed that the teaching activity would be “face-to-face for all levels and stages of the educational system”, the possibility of making the safety distance of 1.5 more flexible meters to 1.2 meters in low incidence scenarios, and the maintenance of the so-called ‘bubble groups’ from Infant to 4th grade of Primary.
From the Department directed by Pilar Alegría they insist that the percentage of confined classrooms in the last week continues to be below the maximum registered (between 1.6% and 1.7%) when the schools reopened in September of last year.
Specifically, in the last week of classes, from December 15 to 22, a total of 5,433 classrooms were quarantined throughout Spain, which represents 1.30% of the total, according to data provided by the autonomous communities to the Ministry of Education and FP, to which Europa Press has had access.
In any case, education is the area that has registered the most infections for three weeks, above work or leisure. According to the latest data from Health, in the week of December 10 to 17, 334 outbreaks were reported with 1,979 cases in schools, most in Primary, although these data were lower than those registered in the previous two weeks, due to since December 15 is when the childhood vaccination campaign began.
In this sense, sources from the Ministry highlight that, today, a third of the child population (between 5 and 12 years old) already has the first schedule of the vaccine against Covid-19, so the forecast that Manages Education is that, around the Christmas holidays, the number of infections goes down.
From the Ministry, whose bet continues being the presence, ask not to generate “alarm” by this issue and point out that children are being infected in environments outside the educational field and that schools continue to be safe spaces.
THE EDUCATIONAL COMMUNITY, AGAINST DELAYING THE RETURN
Both students and parents, teachers and schools, are against delaying the return to classes after Christmas.
“If work is returning to normality and many students are already being vaccinated, there is no reason to delay the return of the students,” the president of the State Confederation of Student Associations (CANAE), Andrea Henry, assures Europa Press. From the university level, they also advocate returning in person and on the scheduled dates so as not to “harm” the students, according to the president of the Coordinator of Student Representatives of Public Universities (CREUP), Nicolás Marco Hernández. .
Likewise, parents’ associations such as CEAPA, COFAPA and CONCAPA are in favor of returning to classrooms on the scheduled dates and in person, but they ask for more measures and information about the vaccination campaign. “The Covid protocols will have to be reviewed, adapting them to the new context and implementing measures that were already proven effective last year: more reinforcement of teachers to perform class split-ups, lower ratios or more distancing measures, and adopt new ones” , they point out from CEAPA.
For their part, unions such as CCOO, CSIF, UGT, STES and FEUSO ask to reinforce anti-Covid measures and that the replacement of infected teachers be more effective. “For us, the debate is not delaying or not returning to classes, but putting the necessary means and resources to guarantee a safe presence,” said Francisco García (CCOO). “The vaccination of children and adolescents and the booster dose for education workers should be promoted,” says Maribel Loranca (UGT), who also demands consensual measures between the Government and the autonomous communities.
Also the public centers, represented in the Federation of Associations of Directors of Public Educational Centers (FEDADI), do not want to delay the return to classes or for them to be telematic because “the face-to-face education system is necessary” and the presence when minors were not being vaccinated. In any case, its president, Toni G. Picornell, demands “maximum prevention”.
In the same vein the private centers are manifested. “We believe that, even though it is a complicated situation, we must put all the means and resources to return in person. It is essential to guarantee the education and mental health of our children and young people, so that they are not even more affected,” says Elena Cid, general director of CICAE. “We consider that, taking extreme precautions, we must continue to trust the good conduct of schools, which have proven to be safe places,” says Alfonso Aguiló, president of CECE, an association that brings together private and subsidized centers, who also defends the presence.
For its part, Crue Spanish Universities defends the presence in the return to the classroom after the Christmas holidays and that this return to classes is done with the “maximum normality possible”.
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