The school year in Melilla has started with about 22,700 students, a significant decrease in the ratio of students per classroom compared to the previous government stage and almost a hundred more teaching professionals than last year, which brings the figure to 1,630 teachers.
The Government Delegate, Sabrina Moh, and the Provincial Director of the Ministry of Education and Professional Training (MEyFP), Juan Ángel Berbel, have chosen this year the Juan Caro Romero Public School to carry out the official presentation of the 2023-2024 academic year.
The highest representative of the Government of Spain in our city, has highlighted the commitment of the Executive of Pedro Sánchez for public and quality education and has highlighted that the objectives that had been set with the arrival to the Government have been met and on this path work will continue.
Moh has referred to the “significant and significant” drop in the pupil to classroom ratio. “When we came to the Government, we had 28 students per classroom in Children; now we are in 22,” he said, referring to 25 students per classroom in Primary or 28 in Secondary.
“A significant downturn,” he said, “that would not have been possible if it had not been accompanied by an increase in staff.” The Delegate has talked about the importance of continuing to hire more teachers to improve the quality of education and, in turn, to improve the working conditions of education professionals. “We are talking about 300 more people since coming to the government and 95 more teachers than last year,” he said.
Moh has shown the commitment of the Government to continue working on this reduction of the ratios but also on the implementation of basic and necessary infrastructures “to work on longer-term solutions in terms of the reduction of the ratio” and has alluded to the educational center in Encarna León, “which will see the light in a short time”, which involves four lines and, therefore, “will serve to continue palliating the ratios as high as those we had five years ago”.
Employment Plan Support
The Delegate, who was accompanied by the director of the center, Sergio Balbuena, and the management team, has conveyed to the entire educational community their desire to have a happy start to the course and has reiterated the support of the General Administration of the State “because we are going to be there, supporting any action, so that we can develop this course with as few incidents as possible”.
Within the commitments of the Government Delegation with the educational centers, Moh has referred to the Employment Plan that is developed from this institution every year and through which, “we have been able to increase, in a significant way, the personnel that is assigned to the different centers.”
A staff that complements the team of professionals who carry out their work in each of the centers and that also allows to carry out other types of actions with profiles that are not within the catalog of the RPT of the educational centers. Thus, it has referred, for example, to health personnel, computer workers, social integrators, communicative mediators… workers who come to complement the work that professionals carry out in the different educational centers of our city.
The Employment Plan 2022-2023 will end on October 31, although there are already some of the workers who have completed their contracts. Now, “we are waiting for the new call to continue working”, explained the Delegate, who has announced that she will hold a meeting with all the management teams of the Melilla centers, to be able to address this issue and to continue working on the improvement of the next Employment Plan.
Fewer students per classroom
The Provincial Director of the MEyFP, for his part, has reported that his forecast for this year is about 22,700 students. “On the 7th the stage of Early Childhood, Primary and Secondary Education began in its two modalities, the compulsory one -the ESO- and the post-compulsory one -the Baccalaureate- and tomorrow the Vocational Training, the Baccalaureate of the School of Art, the different artistic teachings of the School of Art, Adult Education and the Conservatory will be incorporated at the beginning of the formal course,” he said.
“For three years we have been noticing in statistical data and in the degree of enrollment in our centers, especially in the initial stage, that there is a significant decrease in the number of students attending school,” he explained, and he referred to Infantile 3 where the classrooms have already been placed in 20 students, and the estimate, he added, is that the ratio is going to be in the Infantile education section in 22 students, “which are quite nicer figures than those we found when we arrived in 2018-2019, which was 28.5 students per classroom.”
In the Primary stage “there is also a gradual decrease in it”, he said, since it is around 24.2 in public centers and, if the agreed ones are added, it would be 25.4 students per classroom, which means that four students have dropped since the 2018-2019 academic year.
In Secondary, “we are observing that there is a transfer of students who opt for the teaching of FP,” he said. “A fairly generous offer” that has gone from 1,800 students in the 2018-2019 academic year to the 2,600-2,700 students that Berbel estimates will take a Vocational Training course this year.
As for the rest of the teaching, as an Official School of Languages, the Provincial Director has indicated that the estimated number, in the absence of closing the registration process, is about 1,100-1,200 students; that of the Conservatory, about 300-320 students; and in Adult Education, between 1,000-1,100 students.
300 spots more
In total, there are 28 educational centers in the city: 16 Infant and Primary Schools; 6 institutes, the School of Art, the Integrated Vocational Training Centre, the Conservatory, the Official School of Languages, Adult Education and the Queen Sofia Special Education Centre.
To cater to this student population, as reported by Berbel, Melilla has a total of 1,630 teachers this year. With regard to the academic year 2017-2018, in which there were 1,325 teaching professionals, it implies an increase of 300 quotas, which salarially implies 12 million euros.
In addition, the increase of 95 places in this course will mean that the classroom teaching load in the teachers’ hours will be reduced “and it will be replaced by material preparation, tutoring preparation or other complementary activities that also benefit the quality of teaching that takes place in the classroom along with the decrease in ratios,” he said.
What’s more, Berbel has pointed out that, regardless of whether there is a change of government or not, “200 of those 300 quotas that we have with respect to 2017-2018 have been consolidated. That is, 1,530 quotas will always be consolidated already in the city of Melilla”. Something that was a historical demand of the unions and that has been answered thanks to the effort made by the Ministry of Education, has made clear.
With regard to the remaining 95 quotas, it has advanced that it will try to “consolidate as many as possible” since having more human resources in the classrooms “implies an improvement in teaching”. And, along the way, he has assured that he will continue working on having more educational infrastructures.
Encarna León, in a “reasonable” period
Regarding the new Children’s and Primary School Encarna León, the Provincial Director of Education explained that the reception ceremony was favorable on August 1.
However, before that reception event “we received an email from the Ministry of Public Works where it reminded us of a series of documentary aspects that had to be processed,” he said, so they presented the documentation on August 4. On August 16, the Ministry made a new documentary request, which was also provided on August 30 “and in an email on August 18 they indicated that we would soon have the technical supervision report”.
“The technical supervision report is what allows you, if everything is fine, to be given the first occupation license”, he explained and, if it indicates that there are aspects to be corrected, “they have to be executed as soon as possible in order to be able to give us that first occupation license”.
“The construction company is confident about this,” he said, adding that they have told him that these are not “unsolvable aspects” and that they can be tackled “in a reasonable period of time.”
“We expect the Technical Directorate to indicate to the construction company what solution is going to be given to these formal objections,” he said and insisted that “both the construction company and the Technical Directorate have indicated that these are aspects that can be resolved in a reasonable period of time.”
Quality education
For his part, the Director of the educational center, Sergio Balbuena, has thanked both the Government Delegate and the Provincial Director of Education for choosing the Juan Caro Romero for the presentation of the 2023-2024 school year and has recognized that it is a reason for “joy and pride” for the ‘Juancareños’.
A course, he added, that involves the application of LOMLOE at all educational levels, to which the characteristics and particularities of each center are added. “In our case, the teaching staff of this center is very proud of their work and is very knowledgeable about the characteristics and needs of their educational community,” he said.
In this regard, Balbuena has made it clear that they know how important it is for the students of the center to bet on a quality education. “We are convinced that education is the most powerful tool that our children will have to overcome many of the obstacles they encounter every day,” he said.
“We know that education is going to make it possible to compensate for many of their inequalities, it is going to equalize their opportunities, it is going to allow them to grow personally and socially,” he said.
And, with this conviction, he added that the center is committed to an innovative methodology. “This course we also want to develop programs that allow us, precisely, to give as much as possible”, he said, and referred to work projects ranging from three years to 6th grade, experimental workshops, environmental awareness programs, development of digital competence… “that will allow us to work for the future of our students”.