Dangers to education

While some indicators seem to suggest that the economic cycle is changing, Education Ministry and regional government budgets for 2014 show new cutbacks. While the austerity measures may prove to be less severe than those seen in the recent past, the country’s administrations that have control of their education systems will have cut their spending by 7.298 billion euros between 2010 and 2014. Coming hot on the heels of the latest PISA report — which revealed a stagnation in the test scores of Spanish students — a labor-union report has revealed that the shrinkage of education budgets in the course of the crisis so far has been as much as 16.7 percent on average. The chief losers by percentage are Castilla-La Mancha (-31.1 percent), Catalonia (-24.1) and Castilla y León (-20.4).

To this we must add further cuts applied by the Education Ministry. The entire system now has 35 percent fewer resources than it did 10 years ago, while student needs have risen as a result of greater numbers. In the schoolrooms there are now half-a-million more pupils than in 2009, and at least 20,000 fewer teachers. In spite of ministerial announcements about increases in certain areas, and the provision of a 10.5-percent increase in study grants, the accumulated cuts during the crisis will certainly result in a loss of quality. And the consequences will drag on for years, given that education is one of the key factors in terms of the country’s competitiveness.

The lack of funds for education will prevent any action being taken on the shortcomings that have already been identified as the main causes of the poor results obtained by Spanish students in the PISA report. Such action would, for example, involve measures to improve the overall quality of teaching, and to incentivize ongoing staff training. It would also include greater resources for pupils with special needs.

Foreign students

In recent years, the Spanish education system has received a considerable influx of foreign children, many of whom were denied access to proper education in their home countries. In some cases they cannot even speak the language in which their classes are taught, something that has a detrimental effect on average performance. The same lack of resources is also affecting children with above-average abilities. The PISA report indicates that Spanish pupils are not, in general, up to the standard that might be expected of them in terms of excellence — which means that the system is incapable of bringing out the potential that might otherwise be developed.

In these circumstances it would be even more unfortunate were the government to go all the way in implementing the promise it made to Brussels in 2012 that it would trim the education budget by one percentage point of GDP (from 4.9 percent to 3.9), which would mean reducing it by another 2.7 billion euros. It is beyond doubt that the deficit-reduction objectives must be respected, but it is also certain that education needs to be accorded a preserved, priority status, because the country’s future productive capacity depends on it.