Dear Mrs. Pedrosa:

Congratulations on your appointment as an Education Advisor. It is not a new responsibility that from now on you will have over you. You have to know the Department of Education well after four years as Vice-Advisor. At the end of the course, I would like to remind you of some things (to meditate on it in summer, if you like). I know that we have very different visions of education, and I have nothing to say about the power of government, I am a professor and you are a government advisor, no less. But I'm sure we share the idea that we should promote the public use of reason. I'm a little ashamed of having to say a few things, but well, I have to say.

As you know, the quality of teachers' work is decreasing in recent years, due to the constant increase in our workload. This increase in the workload has many origins and is reflected in many small details. In fact, being small, they go unnoticed at first, but they accumulate like grains of sand, eventually forming mountains. A thorough study should be carried out to quantify this growth in work and to determine which of the new demands that are added to what we have to do do do not improve our work, but make it worse.

Accelerated digitalisation, with a very poor material base (e.g. lack of adequate computer equipment maintenance), is a constant source of concern and stress, as it often leads to loss of time and perpetuation of tasks.

The portals and software used by teachers for administrative procedures and the bureaucratic aspect of our work (making notes, controlling failures, communicating with families, recording everyday incidents) are scarce and are not adapted to the needs of the centers. This means delaying the tasks that should be carried out indefinitely in a few minutes. A couple of examples:

The teacher can receive the communication of a student's mother. This mother can talk about her son or daughter with the first name, without first name and without specifying in which group she is. Considering that according to the subject a teacher may have between 150 and 200 students, things become complicated. The solution is not to teach parents to come to us providing the necessary data to identify the student. The mistake is in the computer program itself, a parent should have mandatory fields to communicate with us (otherwise he would not be able to send the communication). Another: to determine that a student is not present, we have to do about twenty clicks to access the screen; an act as simple as registering a fault, taking into account the usual circumstances of the road, can mean a delay of 10 minutes. These are just two examples, among many others. It is particularly worrying if we remember that the Basque Government signed an agreement with a multinational in the sector for the use of Workspace for Education, including public money.

Programming and evaluations under the latest law (leaving aside other aspects that could be criticised) are leading to an unprecedented increase in bureaucratic working hours. Many times, as I say, sterile work that does not improve the quality of teaching.

Many professors of public education would be grateful if you could study these topics with your team and look for solutions. But unfortunately, not being our only problems, in a letter I will bring you so many others.

If you're on vacation, enjoy a lot.

Carefully, T. M.