“AMPA celebrates second line of infants granted for CEIP Virgen del Pilar while other schools face closure in Huelva”

The Association of Mothers and Fathers three caravels of the CEIP Virgen del Pilar de Huelva celebrates that the Junta de Andalucía has finally granted them the “much necessary” second line of three-year-old Infants for the next course.

From the AMPA of this center they urgently requested not to be deleted “an essential unit to cover the great student demand”. As Inés García, a member of the Virgen del Pilar mothers and fathers association in the capital, explained, a few months ago the school received information from the Educational Development Delegation advancing the possible suppression of the line for the next course, “but from the center They thought that all this would depend on the number of registrations that were given”.

Since the process of schooling in March, the center received forty requests in the process of admission and schooling, of which three of them were students with special educational needs. With the supposed closure of the second line, as the Junta predictably pointed out, “the only resulting proposed unit was going to remain overloaded and it would mean that attention to students would not be adequate, since to attend to some, others would have to be neglected and this would have consequences at the level of quality and educational attention”.

After sending several letters to the Huelva delegation, disseminating it through the media and calling a concentration This Tuesday at the CEIP Arias Montano in the capital, Vanesa Benítez, a member of the AMPA Tres Carabelas, assures that on Monday the director of the Virgen del Pilar received a call from the Educational Development Council in Seville informing that “the line was not to be deleted at school and would continue the next academic year”.

With everything, and despite the concentration being officially called off after what happened, some members of the educational community, as well as mothers and fathers from various centers, have wanted to meet at the gates of Arias Montano this Tuesday as a sign of support for other schools from Huelva who live the same situation. “The unions called off the concentration, but even so, we wanted to unite to show our rejection of the possible closure of other units in the province for the 2022-23 academic year,” says Benítez.

After recent events, the Educational Development Delegation in Huelva has asked meet up with the Teaching Staff Board de Huelva to negotiate the problem of the suppression of classes in the public centers of the province.

This Wednesday an agreement will be reached between the Board and the unions for the next academic year. Diamar González, a member of the Huelva Teaching Staff Board, hopes “there will be an understanding and negotiations can be done.” If this is not the case, the next course could close around 43 Infant units in the province, a provisional figure that must be confirmed later after the enrollment period ended in September.

“We think that the problem regarding the actual unit awards is that in many cases, and after confirmation with the current planning data, this concession of one more unit is not carried out now in planning, but rather in September, when all the centers have already made the organization of the teaching staff and the corresponding schedules. This complaint is widespread by all the management teams of the centers,” they say.

For all these reasons, for unions like the CCOO “the time has come to stop this bleeding of suppression of units. We must make a study of the educational centers that conclude with a drop in the ratio, in order to bet on improving the educational quality of Huelva citizens”.

Among the centers that may lose Infant classes next year is the specific case of CEIP Arias Montanoin Huelva, where 35 applications have been received, while the Delegation “has only allowed them to offer one unit, so if they are not finally granted the second, they would be left with a group of 25 students, of which 3 have special educational needs (NEE)”.

They also regret the situation of the CEIP Menendez y Pelayo, in Valverde del camino. They say that in this center they have received 33 applications, while the Delegation has only allowed them to offer one unit, “so if they are not finally granted the second, they would be left with a group of 25 students, of which 5 are from SEN in Specific Classroom (but their reference group is the mentioned group).

In addition, there are other centers that would also lose line, such as the CEIP Three of August or the Pilar Martinez Cruzthat despite having 35 applications in 3 years of childhood, “it will not be able to expand its units.”