Students & Teachers Unite Against Education Cuts In Spain
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Spain’s education system came to a grinding halt on Tuesday after teachers and students across the entire education sector – from kindergarten to university – went on strike to protest the 3 billion euros ($4 billion) in education spending cuts that were approved by the government last week.
The protest was the first ever strike that had been jointly coordinated by Spain’s five main teachers’ unions; and saw all but three of Spain’s 17 regions participating in the stoppage.
Spain’s education system came to a grinding halt on Tuesday after teachers and students across the entire education sector – from kindergarten to university – went on strike to protest the 3 billion euros ($4 billion) in education spending cuts that were approved by the government last week.
The protest was the first ever strike that had been jointly coordinated by Spain’s five main teachers’ unions; and saw all but three of Spain’s 17 regions participating in the stoppage.
According to union figures, nearly 80 percent of all teachers across Spain joined the strike, though the Education Ministry placed the figure at just 19.4 percent.
[quote]“Education is absolutely the last thing that should get squeezed because it’s absurd to try to make amends for the spending mistakes of the past by jeopardizing the prospects of the next generation,” said Ignacio Valero, an economics professor at the Complutense University, to the New York Times.[/quote]Besides the $4 billion in spending cuts, the Spanish government is also planning to raise school fees by as much as 50 percent this year in order to meet with its crippling public debt crisis.
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On its part, Spain’s Education Ministry has insisted that its education overhaul was not simply a cost-cutting exercise but rather an attempt to raise schools’ efficiency and quality.
“The problem of our education system is not fundamentally a problem of resources. We are facing a situation of stagnation, if not regression in our education system, to which we must respond,” said Spain’s education minister Jose Ignacio Wert to a parliamentary committee last week.
Yet strikers argued that education spending cuts and tuition fee hikes would only serve to weaken the nation’s youth unemployment rate, which already stands at a staggering 52 percent of the population under the age of 25.
[quote]“If young people cannot afford to study anymore, what else are they meant to be doing while this crisis drags on and makes it impossible for them to find work?” said María Angeles Márquez, 55, a civil servant who said she fully supported the latest protests.[/quote]Related: Infographic: How A Student’s Debt Affects the Family Unit
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“Quality public education is in danger of dying…They are sacrificing our youths’ learning because of the crisis,” added Voro Benavent, spokesman for the Teaching Workers Union, in an interview with Reuters.
Spain’s high school graduation rate is 74 percent, compared with an 85 percent average in the European Union, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Workers’ Commission leader Francisco Garcia also told Euronews that the cuts would lead to between 80,000-10,000 teachers being fired.
