- The Department of Education of the Government of Navarra has decided to maintain or expand the offer of English, Italian, German and French. On the contrary, the Basque groups have decreased against the criteria of the School of Languages: "It seems that the Department of Education wants to manage the School as a private company, forgetting that education is public."
Of the 3,950 places that will be offered at the Language School of Pamplona during this course, almost half will be to learn English (1,925), the Italian offer has also increased and French and German have maintained the places. The Basque Country will lose two groups, the School will move from 750 places to 700 places by decision of the Government Department of Education.
The school’s Euskera professor, Jaume Gelabert, explained to ARGIA that the School’s management had requested the maintenance of Euskera squares, but Education has taken a decision against: “In general, the decisions taken by the department indicate that they are unaware of the functioning of the School, and it is clear that its criteria often do not match ours.”
Even, “it is difficult to say which criteria the Department of Education has taken to close the groups, as it has not clearly communicated its criteria.” If the criterion is the number of students, Gelabert says that taking groups one by one does not make sense, as one year for specific reasons in a group may have few students and in the next. “On the other hand, we believe we should take into account the global average, in which we had almost 22 students per group.”
Despite the figures, “it seems that the Department of Education wants to manage the School as if it were a private company – the professor has denounced – forgetting that ours is public education, and so, in our opinion, the numbers should not be the only or the main criterion. In the minds of Navarre society, we have tried to diversify our offer through modules, and in this the department has also closed the way.”
Restrictions on the Basque country year after year
Year after year, the supply of Euskera in the language schools of Navarra is decreasing, going from 825 places of Euskera in the last five years to 700 places in Pamplona. This year, "at the moment we believe that no student who wants to learn Euskera has been left out; the closure of groups is noted above all in the number of professors and in the enormous workload of the testing era".