Although the decision will hardly affect the imbalance between schools, on the pretext of tackling segregation, the Government has withdrawn three pupils from the Public School of Ordizia for use in ikastola.

We have learned of the publication of the final registration lists for the course 2023-24, on the pretext of dealing with segregation, that the Department of Education has decided to allocate three students enrolled in the Ordizia Public School to Ikastola Jakintza. The Government has rejected complaints from families when the interim agreement of the Department of Education was made public.

The Ordizia Public School received 47 registrations for 2nd Child Education, while Jakintza Ikastola received 45. Despite the fact that the final enrollment was thus materialized, the Public School had five free places.

However, the Department of Education, based on the “Vulnerability Index” it has established based on absolutely dark and subjective criteria, has addressed three students who applied for enrollment in the Public School. Instead, he directed a student from ikastola to the Public School. The final result is that it will leave the Public School with better enrollment and free places with 45 students and Jakintza Ikastola 47. What is more serious is that the decision will hardly affect the imbalance between the people and the centres.

In fact, among the schools in Ordizia the imbalance at source is 31.5 percentage points. It has grown 25.5 points in the last 8 school years. There is an imbalance of 48 percentage points in the Basque knowledge of the families of each school. And almost all students and families with social needs are at the Public School.

The intervention of the Department of Education will hardly affect these numbers. The imbalance will therefore be maintained. But, on the pretext of dealing with the imbalance and using the absolutely obscure and subjective “Vulnerability Index”, the Government has removed the registration of the Public School to grant it to the concerted one.

As we have denounced on more than one occasion, it is serious that the Basque Government has not taken any action in recent years to prevent segregation and the decisions it has taken to increase the imbalance between the schools in Ordizia. As Ararteko himself pointed out in his reports over the past four years. It is scandalous, however, that the public administration should take steps to demolish the Public School and give it to a concerted centre, especially when the Public School has free places. Moreover, when the school segregation used as an excuse to make that decision has little impact and maintains the imbalances between the centers.

The students and families of the Public School of Ordizia are not prepared to accept these kinds of interventions of the Basque Government that should guarantee the Public School, equality, social justice, diversity, inclusion and Euskaldunization, in the opposite sense. Moreover, when we see clearly that it condemns Ordizia in general and the Public School in particular to an imbalance. We will continue to denounce the situation publicly and before Ararteko again and mobilize to turn it around.

Association of Fathers and Mothers of the Basque Public School of Ordizia Urdanetarrak