School segregation: We're failing

The Basque School Council, several NGOs, the Basque Harro Centre of the Basque Public School and education experts reaffirm time and time again: The public-private system we have at the CAPV segregates students of low socioeconomic level, excluding them from the public network.

The diagnosis of the former director of the evaluation institute ISEI-IVEI, Francisco Luna is as follows: “... the Basque educational system, with total competition for 40 years, has serious internal problems related to inequity, and serious situations of segregation, almost scandalous. We do not manage to reduce the distance between the students at both ends in terms of socioeconomic level, it seems that the investment in education is ineffective if we see the results of the external evaluations; our system experiences realities of gettisation of centers and students, if there is no balanced distribution of responsibilities in terms of the reception of all diversities...". [this passage has been translated into wording]

What are the consequences of this obvious segregation? Two-speed educational centers, lack of integration, pockets of marginalization, (SAVE the Children warned that 25.3% of children under 18 – 41,515 children and adolescents – are in a situation of severe poverty or at risk of social exclusion in the Basque Country and live with 26,543 people with major shortages), a social gap and, probably, an increase in crime. The equation is simple: integration or marginalization.

Euskera: objectives not achieved

In the field of Euskaldunization, although things are moving forward, the Educational System does not achieve the objectives, according to the latest Assessment Diagnosis made by ISEI (2019). According to this study, 34.1% of elementary school students 4.mailako have not reached the Basque level of reference (B1), nor 53.3% of those of ESO 2.mailako have made it their own (B2). The decline is even more pronounced in concerted private education. The ISEK, with a low, repetitive or foreign-born socioeconomic and cultural index, says ISE- is, in general, the photograph of people who have difficulty speaking in Basque. It cannot be said more clearly.

Regarding the use of the Basque Country, the diagnosis of the Situation of the Youth of the Basque Country published last March by the Basque Observatory of Youth shows that the use of the Basque Country has decreased among young Basques from 15 to 29 years old.

Segregation and Basque Country

It is not difficult to imagine in a segregated school classroom what can be the starting point of the children who have never heard the words “mother” or “until later” in front of the Basque Country: ignorance, surprise, discouragement on the part of the house. How can these children who live in precariousness and have a dark future be immersed in Basque and Basque culture? How do you convince people to speak in Basque without creating an inclusive social network? How do you create this inclusive network in your school if you're all like them, segregated boys and girls? What interest does the Basque Country have for those who are forced to be in a job they will never ask for their knowledge, for those who will never have a place in the administration? Why learn Euskera if no one uses Euskera around me? We deprive boys and girls of schools with a high rate of disadvantaged families of the possibility of seeing the Basque Country normally and of cultivating the capacity to coexist with others to enrich themselves personally and socially. Are we making Euskera the middle class language? The equation is simple: either integration into the Basque world or marginalization in Spanish.

With segregation we are losing everyone, and the coexistence of the society of the future and the right to speak in Basque is called into question. Segregation is an obstacle and acts against the normalization of Euskera.

José Manuel Martínez (former professor)