school

One of Barcelona’s main cultural institutions celebrated its 35^th anniversary last weekend. Barcelona’s contemporary music scene of the last 3 decades cannot be understood without El Taller de Músics school. For this reason, Santiago Auserón, la Mala Rodríguez & Refree, Cris Juanico, Miqui Puig, Andrea Motis & Joan Chamorro or the guitarist Biel Ballester are some the most prestigious artists who participated  in a tribute concert at the ‘Palau de la Música’ on Sunday. The famous Original Jazz Orquestra played throughout the evening, in an event that was also a vindication of a cultural project in times of economic crisis. Founded in 1979, El Taller de Músics is Barcelona’s most prestigious school for jazz, flamenco and fusion music. The school gives significant style freedom to its students and also organises numerous concerts.

On Tuesday Catalonia’s education stakeholders – including unions, pedagogic organisations and parent associations – asked the Catalan Executive and Parliament to lead “the boycott” of the Spanish Government’s Education Reform, known as LOMQE. This reform aims to recentralise education powers, foster religion and impose Spanish as a language of instruction in Catalonia. Furthermore, on Monday evening thousands of people demonstrated in front of Catalonia’s High Court (TSJC) in support of the current school model in Catalonia, which is based on the linguistic immersion principle that guarantees the knowledge of both Spanish and Catalan. Political parties, trade unions, cultural associations and teaching organisations were protesting against the TSJC’s recent ruling that imposed a requirement that 25% of a school’s curriculum be taught in Spanish if a single pupil asks for it. The TSJC was interpreting a judgement by the Spanish Supreme Court, framed in a broader offensive against Catalan language.

‘Escola Pia’, one of the largest Catalan networks of privately-owned schools, believes that the Catalan High Court (TSJC) ruling forcing one of its school in Barcelona to teach 25% of classes in Spanish, “goes against” its educational project. The school network highlights that this project was “formally accepted by the families who have enrolled their children here”. ‘Escola Pia’ have issued a manifesto rejecting the TSJC sentence which states that if the family of a single pupil asks for classes to be taught in Spanish, “at least” 25% of the mandatory school subjects will have to be taught in Spanish in the entire classroom, regardless of the opinion of the other pupils’ families. After having received such a demand from one family, ‘Escola Pia’ explained: “We choose to teach in the Catalan language because we are deeply rooted to this country and we are at its service”.

In order “to guarantee the general interest”, the Catalan Executive rejects changing “a single comma” of the linguistic immersion model in place in Catalonia’s school system despite the latest judicial sentences forcing to introduce Spanish as a language of instruction, as confirmed by the Government’s Spokesperson Francesc Homs. The Catalan Executive “will continue to implement Catalonia’s Education Law (LEC)” and will file an appeal against last week’s sentence issued by the Catalan High Court (TSJC), interpreting a previous decision from the Spanish Supreme Court. Furthermore, the Catalan Council for Constitutional Guarantees – an independent advisory body on jurisdiction matters – stated that the Spanish Government’s Education Reform is “unconstitutional” and goes against Catalonia’s self-government and its own laws such as the LEC.

Catalonia’s High Court has interpreted the last sentence of the Spanish Supreme Court and forces the Catalan Government to offer “at least” 25% of the mandatory school curricula in Spanish in the schools where pupils ask for it. A dozen of parents had complained in the last few years, filing several appeals and stating they wanted their children to be taught in Spanish in Catalonia’s public schools. The Catalan school model is based on the linguistic immersion principle and almost all the subjects are taught in Catalan except Spanish which is taught as a language. However, the system includes many flexibility measures for new-comers and individualised attention in Spanish. The Spanish Supreme Court considered this was insufficient and sentenced that a class had to be taught in Spanish if the family of a single pupil asked for it and even if the other children’s families had not requested it.

The Catalan Government and the other four Autonomous Community executives that are not run by the People’s Party (PP) are totally opposed to the Spanish Executive’s Education Reform, which recentralises powers, homogenises curricula, fosters the presence of religion and sidelines Catalan language and history. The Reform has raised a huge controversy in Catalonia, since it ends the Catalan school model that has been in place for the last 35 years and is backed by a large consensus. On Wednesday the Education Ministers of Catalonia, the Basque Country, Andalusia, Asturias and the Canaries criticised the Spanish Government’s “lack of dialogue”. They pointed out “the improvisation, precipitation and imposition” of the Spanish Education Minister, José Ignacio Wert. They also argued that it is “impossible” to “implement” the Reform in the next school-year.

In appeal, the Spanish Supreme Court has sided with the family who requested their son to be taught in Spanish in school, alongside Catalan. Despite the Constitution not advocating pupils had “the right to be taught in Spanish”, but only stating they had “the right and duty to know Spanish”, a dozen families have requested their children to be taught in this language, turning to the judicial system. Whilst the Constitutional Court has validated on two occasions the Catalan schooling system, based on Catalan as first language of instruction, the Supreme Court ruled against it. The Catalan Government was offering individualised attention to these children, but the judicial decision states that Spanish has to be used for “the entire class of the pupil”, even though the rest of the pupils have not requested to be taught in this language.

Since it was named Mobile World Capital for a 7-year period in 2011, Barcelona has worked on becoming a world leader in the mobile phone industry. Since 2006, it is hosting the world’s main event of the sector, the Mobile World Congress, but on top of this it is also developing manifold parallel initiatives. Some of them focus on Education and the younger generation. Among such measures there is a new secondary school course, ‘Mobilitzem la informàtica’ (Mobilising IT), dedicated to creating and designing applications for mobile phones. During the first stage of the course, 5,965 pupils from 196 high-schools have studied the subject in a theoretical way. Now they are about to start the practical stage, devoted to designing and developing mobile applications to be released on the market. Pupils will be mentored by trained teachers as well as leading professionals in the sector.

The Spanish Education Minister, José Ignacio Wert, emphasised the need to have a common and single history of Spain taught in all the Autonomous Communities. With the Education Reform he is currently proposing, the history curriculum will be imposed by Madrid and the Autonomous Communities will only be able to add a small portion referring to their own history. However, such additional contentswill be excluded from the final exams and therefore pupils will tend to ignorethem. With this initiative, Wert aims to impose a single interpretation of the historic facts affecting Spain’s history and nation-building. Lately, the Spanish Government, run by the People’s Party (PP), has repeatedly stated that Spain is “the oldest nation in Europe” and is now focusing on the education system to spread this idea.

The “very moderate” growth expectations for 2014, between 0.5% and 1%, will make it “difficult” for the unemployment rates to fall below the current 27%. This was the conclusion of the 2014 Economic Report of Barcelona-based ESADE, one of the top business schools in the world. The main author of the report stressed that this “slow and costly” growth should contribute only in a “very reduced” way to creating new jobs in 2014. However, he also explained that the Labour Market Reform would have positive effects on employment levels in the medium and long term. The study indicates that consumption in 2014 will “remain restricted” due to the high unemployment rates and reduced wages.

Artur Mas, President of the Catalan Government, signed an article published in New Europe’s special edition ‘Our world in 2014’, explaining why Catalans want to hold a self-determination vote on the 9^th of November, 2014. The European section of the publication includes articles from the French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, the Italian PM Enrico Letta, the UK Finance Minister George Osborne and two EU Commissioners, Neelie Kroes and Androulla Vassilliou, among others. In his article, Mas asked the Spanish Government to “abide by its professed democratic principles and to allow the referendum”. The Catalan President explained why a majority of Catalans are supporting independence from Spain due to historical, political, economic, cultural and identity-related reasons. “In twenty-first century Europe, we solve these disputes peacefully and democratically, with ballot boxes and votes” he stated.

The latest PISA survey shows that pupils in Catalonia perform above the Spanish average in all subjects except Science knowledge. The survey checks the knowledge of 15 year-old students of 34 member countries of the OECD and 31 others associated with this international organization in Reading, Science and Maths. In total, it evaluates up to 300.000 pupils, of which 25.313 are from Spain.

The language skills of Catalonia’s population to understand, read, speak and write in Catalan have reached record highs, according to a report from the Statistical Institute of Catalonia (Idescat) with data from 2011. That year, 95.2 % of the residents could understand Catalan, 79.1 % could read it, 73.2 % knew how to speak it, and 55.8 % knew how to write in this language. According to the Idescat figures, the foreign nationality population has registered the highest increases: 82.1 % of them stated they could understand Catalan in the 2011 survey, whereas, according to the previous census from 2001, only 61.1% of the foreign-born population had good language comprehension skills.

Thousands of people – 12,000 according to Barcelona’s local police and 200,000 according to the organisers – demonstrated on Sunday in the streets of Barcelona to protest against the Spanish and Catalan Governments’ austerity measures and “antisocial” budgets. Led by the platform ‘Prou Retallades’ (“Stop Budget Cuts”) , the UGT and CCOO trade-unions, as well as political parties and associations, citizens voiced their disapproval of the new pension reform, working fragility and the latest austerity measures. They also specifically protested against the Catalan and Spanish Governments’ budgets for 2014, which they consider “antisocial”. The demonstration organisers criticised the “blind obedience” of the Catalan and Spanish Executives to the European Commission and the Troika.

Catalan language speakers are increasing their number and have exceeded the 10 million people mark, according to the latest report on the situation of Catalan. This means that 72.4 % of the population now speaks the language in the various areas of the Catalan linguistic community. In addition, 12.8 million understand it, representing 91.7% of the population. These latest figures confirm a consolidation trend, which paradoxically, is occurring in an unfavourable context, with an “adverse socio-political environment in territories outside Catalonia”. According to the report, the political and judicial “offensive” against Catalan are the main threats against the standardization of a language which, nevertheless, continues “to progress”.