ELA demands before the Basque Parliament that the Education Law not be approved

The parties are debating these days in the Gasteiz Parliament the amendments to the Education Law project. For this reason, representatives of ELA have gathered today, November 20, to ask Parliament not to approve the Education Law.

The head of Education for ELA, Miren Zubizarreta, has denounced in the protest that the bill only includes “generalities” so that the current educational system is “perpetuated.” “The debate on linguistic models is an example of this. The parties have long ago given up on generalizing the linguistic model that allows knowing the two official languages, the model of linguistic immersion in Basque.” Instead, they have approved an article that allows continuing with the current linguistic models, in the words of Zubizarreta : “What’s more, they can reduce the presence of Basque in model D in favor of Spanish and English. In the bill that we learned about a few months ago it was like this, and now, the amendment on linguistic models presented by the PNV-PSE continues along the same lines: that law will not allow students to be bilingual.”

Likewise, ELA has denounced that this law will not allow the development of an agreed curriculum in Euskal Herria, will not allow a transition towards a sovereign public school and will not prevent the commercialization of the educational system. “To have a quality education it is essential to specify the working conditions and adequate resources, and that has also been left out of this law,” says Zubizarreta.

For this reason, a strike has been carried out in public education on October 24 and 25 and eight days of strike have been called in the social initiative concerted centers, as well as in the entire public sector on December 19.