“The Ministry of Education will provide greater economic and executive muscle to the city’s educational centers and the Provincial Directorate of Education itself.”
The Provincial Director of the Ministry of Education, Vocational Training and Sports (MEFPyD) in Melilla, Elena Fernández Treviño, has valued the visit that was carried out last week by officials of this Ministry and that served to make them know first-hand centers of the city.
“We want to improve the attention to the infrastructures of the educational centers and, therefore, a Joint Infrastructure Commission has been created and, in fact, last week’s visit of the Ministry served to visit Secondary Schools and Institutes and see what were the deficiencies in infrastructures,” he said.
“We want this communication between the Ministry and the Provincial Directorate to work better, giving economic muscle and executive capacity to both the educational centers and the Provincial Directorate itself so that not everything is a matter of Management, which depends on the Ministry of Culture, and that, many times, the volume of work that it has is very slow,” he explained.
Continuing with this issue, he pointed out that Gerencia would take care “only of the major works”. Thus, for example, he referred to the replacement roof of the ‘Real’ centre. “That, if not the Autonomous City, which we are going to agree on, would have to do Management,” he explained.
“But there are many small or medium-sized issues that can be resolved by the centers or the Provincial Directorate and they do not have to wait for them to arrive in Madrid, with all the procedures that this entails,” he added.
Something, he said, that will speed up these processes “and the centers will be very useful because in the end the educational centers are large houses that are exposed to a multitude of avatars,” he said.
Educational abandonment
Fernández Treviño, in his press conference, referred to the commitment to Education that has been carried out in the city for 6 years by the Government of Spain and how this is positively resulting in educational results and the school dropout rate, but also made it clear that “many of the programs that are currently being implemented are relatively few years old and, therefore, the consequences of improving the learning result will also be seen over a few years”.
Thus, the Provincial Director of the MEFPyD has referred to improvements made that will directly result in the reduction of educational abandonment, which has already been reduced by two points, such as the improvement of educational infrastructures. “We have executed the work of the old Central Market, which includes the teachings of the Official School of Language, the Conservatory of Music and the Center of Adult People and in which some 2,400 students study different studies”
The project of the Modular Classrooms of the Santiago Aqueduct was also carried out, “which we insisted that it should house a children’s school from 0 to 3, now that its students have moved to the ‘Encarna León’”. A petition, he recalled, that “has been neglected by the Local Government on numerous occasions so far”, so they are classrooms and facilities that are absolutely in disuse. “I was caring for 300 children and we want me to be able to continue giving a good educational response and, right now, the resource is there, it is unused”, he lamented.
He also referred to the project of the IES ‘Virgen de la Victoria’, in the grounds of Jardín Valenciano, in a plot that serves 1,000 students and that is operational since 2021 or the CEIP ‘Encarna León’, which since April last year serves the students and is a center “that is growing, that right now has two lines with the possibility of opening to two more and that is a center with state-of-the-art facilities and the best right now in our country”. A center, he added, that soon, in addition, will have dining service.
He has also addressed the refurbishment of the workshops, the spaces of the IES ‘Leopoldo Queipo’, of the IES ‘Miguel Fernández’, of the IES ‘Juan Antonio Fernández Perez’, of the adult workshops… “FP has also had a quite important investment in infrastructure”, he stressed.
More teachers
Regarding the stabilization of teachers, the Provincial Director of the MEFPyD has stressed that it is an issue that has a direct impact on the improvement of school dropout and educational success. “There have been 424 seats in the selective process between 2018 and 2024, compared to the 60 that had been convened with the previous government in the period 2012 to 2017,” he compared.
It has also highlighted the fact that the teacher quota has been extended, since during the COVID pandemic “there was an increase of 300 teachers who came to stay” who “have joined as officials of this city and continue working to serve students in the classrooms”.
Fernández Treviño has also had words for the remarkable impulse of Vocational Training (FP), “which is one of the keys that will directly result in the improvement of this educational attention and, above all, so that students who leave early and do not pursue ordinary education in any ESO course, because a normal second or third ESO course does not adapt to their needs or their characteristics.” In fact, he has assured that the FP has the capacity to absorb these students, to redirect them and to engage them in the educational system.
An FP that has implemented 29 new qualifications in recent years in Melilla, and that has the capacity, thanks to professional certification, to facilitate many titles and recognition of qualifications and professions, as well as “to re-engage those students who are staying by the way”. Those 29 degrees “have allowed us to go from 1,825 students in 2018 to 3,000 today,” he added.
PROA+ support program
In her statement to the media, the head of the MEFPyD in the city referred to the special characteristics of our city and, thus, she said that the AROPE report “tells us about 42% social exclusion in the city, this also needs to be addressed because many times this undoubtedly influences school performance and school success results and early abandonment”.
In this chapter, he has placed special emphasis on the PROA+ program, “which seeks precisely to do lever activities, to reinforce the different qualities and diversities that students have, focusing on programs not only of reading and writing but also of support to any of the subjects they have in an ordinary center in the morning, making reinforcement mostly in the afternoons”, he explained and that, even some centers incorporate theater, dance, or arts activities to encourage students “to fill themselves with education and culture”.
It has also highlighted the Territorial Cooperation Programs (PCT) “that are being carried out in educational centers right now, that of literacy and mathematics.” Two competencies, he said, that will be developed through two tutors of the Provincial Directorate and that will be implemented these months, to which will be added, from next year, all the centers that want to carry out these programs of reinforcement of literacy and mathematics “that we also think are very important”.
“All attention to diversity is very important. That is why from the Provincial Directorate or when I was in the Ministry of Education we understood that attention to diversity was very important and we approved and supported agreements such as that of Special Education Technicians, 25 caregivers who were attending schools,” he said.
He also indicated that “a lot of resources have been opened in the centers that attend to this diversity such as the TEA classrooms, which are four throughout Melilla and six Open Classrooms, which right now attend to the students, which existed in Primary and are now going to continue in Secondary”.
These Open Classrooms cater to all the diversity of the students and “two more are going to be created this coming course, so we will have a total of 12 specialized classrooms between the TEA classrooms and the open classrooms,” he said.
Lowering ratios and digitizing classrooms
In his appearance before media professionals, he stressed that the decrease in the ratios of students per classroom has also been key in being able to attend to this diversity “not only in these specialized classrooms but in any ordinary classroom”.
“Right now the ratios we have are the lowest in the history of our city, educatively speaking, and, obviously, this is also due to the attention we have had in terms of the elevation of the teaching group,” he explained.
With regard to the investment in digitization “which is cutting-edge and innovative”, it has calculated that 3 million euros have been allocated to digital screens, together with notebooks worth 324,000 euros and 75,240 in tablets, which reach all the educational centers of the city.
“This is an investment made by the Ministry of Education and that was developed, above all, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic,” he recalled and recalled that, from the MEFPyD, 7 million euros was transferred to the city of Melilla for use in socio-sanitary material and digital material. Money that “has been spent up to the last cent and that came from the Infant and Primary centers to the University.”
All this has asserted “will result in the improvement of educational quality”, but, in any case, the head of the Provincial Directorate of Education has stressed that work will continue to improve the results, especially when for the Government of Spain Education in Melilla is a priority.