Most people have long had to make an appointment with their doctor and delay it for lack of doctors. Perhaps fewer people know the waiting lists existing in the Public Education of Navarra when the intervention of educational support staff is requested, such as counselors, professors of Therapeutic Pedagogy, speech therapists, school promoters, teachers of Community Support or cultural minorities.

Schools are a reflection of the society in which we live. Thus, it is easy to understand that educational workers have more and more students in classrooms with the following circumstances: lack of stimulation and attention due to excessive screen time, ignorance of the vehicular language, vulnerability due to poverty, disorganization and violence in the family, consumption of harmful substances, behaviors harmful to coexistence, affective deficiencies or various devastating psychological and emotional conditions.

Thus, students in need of support have doubled in our classrooms over the past ten years (from 5.1% in 2011-12 to 9.3% in 2020-21), which is increased annually by 2%.

To adequately meet these and other students, care resources should be increased at least as much as educational needs. But only 2 out of 10 students with a clinical diagnosis can currently be attended by hospital staff. The rest, 8 out of 10 children diagnosed, are included in the waiting lists of educational support units or guidance departments, so that at some point they may have some support session. Unregistered persons are not included in these statistics, although they require special attention.

Those in charge of our educational system know that in order to care for all the students, we would have to multiply by five the staff of educational support specialists and reduce the ratios, as established by law, so that in each classroom there are a maximum of 20 children. To this end, the Government of Navarra should invest about 3% more GDP in Education, as do France, Finland or Belgium. However, the truth is that every year scarce resources and staff take them to the centers to cover with the towel of inclusion attention to diversity in our classrooms, a big bed.

We call on educational institutions, families and society in general, after analysing the consequences of not caring for our pupils, to try to solve the problem and to demand that the Navarre political class not be the only community to reduce its debt, to a large extent illegitimate and moral. On the contrary, it must invest everyone’s money to reverse the unfortunate situation that more and more children live in our community. Any other political decision is against the most vulnerable group in society.

Steilas Trade Union