Who orders us ...?

The Basque Government has just been set up and the Minister for Education will be Begoña Pedrosa. Being a vice-counselor in the previous legislature and being one of the founders of the new Education Law passed last December, we are allowed to ask some questions about the development of this law and its educational policy.

We're already lost...

That is what those of us who believe in the public believe, with the new Education Act, the public school has almost taken on board, because it has been passed in defiance of their demands. Madam President, do you think that an adequate educational system can be achieved by damaging half of that system? Through the Basque Public Education Service, the law equates the public school with the concerted one. Do you really think that by offering a public service you have to treat it as if it were a public private institution? When are we going to see the Department of Education giving priority treatment to public school?

The law gives public schools the guarantee of the right to education. So what's the role of the private network? Do you know that the law that equips public and private networks is never going to deal with segregation and is not going to subordinate private interests to the common interest? By the way, why are there no public centers in all the neighborhoods and villages of the CAV? And when should decent and attractive infrastructures (patios, roofs...) be provided in all public centres?

Don't be humiliated yet...

Do not humiliate the employers of private education. The approaches taken by the law are those that throughout history have been requested by private education employers. Will you submit to them to the detriment of the public network? At a time when the birth rate is falling, are you prepared to shield the interests of the entire private network?

Will you continue to give more money to the coordination modules, lengthening the time and extending extraordinary aid? Will you, by law, support the universal concertation we have? Will you maintain this system of discriminatory consultation that allows the presence of the private network and is a source of segregation? Do you know that even if concerted centres are free (they will never be), school segregation will not end? Why donate money to centers that are not needed? Why help the indoctrinators? How about non-Euskaldunians? Do you intend to maintain a dual system that constantly creates school segregation? When is the more rational and logical use of public money for equality and cohesion?

Meet...

Although close to home there is a public school, several students go to a private center, at the choice of their parents, which is far from home. Daily bus trips are made from home to school (33 are made in Álava, 81 in Gipuzkoa and 358 bus routes in Bizkaia). 121 buses per day to Loiu. All of them from Children and Primary). How many kilometers do you make and how much CO2 does it emit? How many square meters of sidewalk do you take while waiting for the bus? How is this unnecessary movement combined with the Department of Education’s criterion of favouring close schooling? Is it sustainable?

Since 2016, public dining has had four pilot projects in which menus are prepared with organic, local and seasonal food. Although eight years have passed since the first experience was launched, this possibility has not yet been opened to the other centres despite requests. Are you ready to take steps in this field?

The news is born ...

And they'll keep coming to stay with us. Are ghettos created in the public network acceptable for the purpose of social cohesion? Are you going to take any steps to turn around public centres that have become ghettos of the most vulnerable? During the registration period, why accept the offer on the concerted when there is still room in public centres? When it comes to establishing educational policies, how long will the choice of families be the main criterion? When do the planning, zoning and institutional enrollment campaigns of the educational centers of Vitoria-Gasteiz have a strategy for the public school? The distribution of vulnerable students has been a failure announced: send to educational centers that make them even more vulnerable, while public schools are empty, do you think it fair?

Where are the "Sufficient Public Places of Early Childhood Education" for the hundreds of children up to 2 years old who have stayed on the street? Did they return to Europe with those millions of euros that they rejected?

We are seven provinces... in the Basque Country.

On the road to the normalization of the Basque Country, the Education Act does not set any progress. Does the maintenance of current language models contribute to such standardization? What guarantee will you provide for the Model D to remain an immersion system? As the Basque Country is the main tool of integration for our children to know the culture of the Basque Country and feel well within it, when is the only model of immersion in Basque? How do you understand the support of non-Euskaldunizan models with public money?

A good law, let's live clean...

In short, what strategic measures will the Basque Government take to put the "status" of the public school and the level of enrolment at the level of the European average, above 80%, as the central axis of the educational system? What steps will it take to extend the official discourse on strengthening public services to public education?

Madam Commissioner, we believe that the most effective instrument for achieving social cohesion, coexistence and integration is the support for a single public network, Euskaldun, managed democratically and with sufficient resources. We have a long way to go to that.

José Manuel Martínez Fernández and Maribel López de Luzuriaga Alonso

Members of Euskal Eskola Publikoa Harro Topagunea