Josep Gonzàlez-Cambray (Lleida, 1972) will save tomorrow the bad drink of listening to the deputies of the Parliament show concern for the future of education in Catalonia: increase in school dropouts, decline in basic skills, drop in reading comprehension, little use of Catalan in schools, lack of attention to vocational training, absence of a policy in favor of inclusion. An education adrift with the angry educational community. The department with the largest budget in modern history and which has hired the most teachers.
The former minister entered the Government in 2018 as general director of public centers and replaced Josep Bargalló in May 2021. Six years old who are a generation of primary school children. "I have not come to manage but to transform the system," he announced on the first day. And with the illusion of the changes in educational innovation, he dismissed all the general directors and created a new transformation secretariat.
His future has been marked by inopportuneness. He wanted to impose his agenda, inflexible to the state of the educational system, in crisis due to the pandemic. In 2021, schools, still with restrictions due to the covid, tired after a harsh confinement that forced them to adapt to new technologies, to make organizational changes in the centers and to take care of the stressful situation that students with poverty problems also experienced , mental health and fear of the future. As if that were not enough, all of this affected, as was foreseeable, their learning.
Thus, in this situation, the minister announced a bomb in February 2022, which he believed would be exciting for families (one of his priorities) and would leave a legacy for later. He did it behind the back of the educational community, for a greater good that no one understood: the unfortunate change in the start of the school calendar. The reasons (conciliation, feminism, disadvantaged families...) nor the urgency were not understood, due to the fatigue of the directors and teachers.
He was left alone before a change of enormous magnitude and cost that nobody had requested and the phrase suspended in the air of "I have come to transform the system". Not even the families applauded.
The School Council, which felt instrumentalized (it had included in a report from the past the debate on changes in school times) and ignored in its work, begged it to rectify, to postpone a year, advancing the difficulties of applying it six months later . In addition, there was nothing foreseen for the good achievement of the idea, which led to improvisation. So it was. Some were good decisions, such as bringing forward the appointments of the staff, others disastrous, such as the educational leisure afternoons in September, which meant an extra economic item from Economy, and were a fiasco. But he had tied President Pere Aragonés to his fate, with whom he announced the measure and the rectification was not under discussion.
Added to the anger of the School Council were the addresses of centers, which had been little listened to and which sent letters of protest. Instead of receiving congratulations for their good work in the pandemic, they received orders. The unrest was channeled by the unions with a historic round of strikes, some massively followed. Nothing like this had ever been seen in education.
The conflict ended with an improvement in the working conditions of teachers, giving one less hour of class, as before the economic crisis, with the entry of 3,500 teachers. Again it was not timely. The cut in class time last January meant the change of teachers' schedules in the middle of the course, and although new teachers came in, the pool of substitutes was emptied, in the winter season, when they were most needed, and coinciding with with the process of stabilization of interim. A general without luck, as Napoleon would say.
Another transformation in Cambray's agenda was "to change the look towards the students." So necessary and so discussed. The essential piece was the new competency curricula. A change imposed by the new Spanish education law, which many centers already applied, and which came into force last September for odd-numbered courses. Cambray was inclined to do so, but he encountered resistance from a part of the educators who used poor academic results (basic skills, mathematics...) as a justification for insulting them. It didn't help either that "resume transformation" training was ridiculed by teachers.
Cambray also had no luck in that the pandemic triggered the demand to enroll in Vocational Training, an effect of the crisis that he did not see coming. He again improvised. The increase in places filled the classrooms above the ratios and made it difficult to find teachers in some sectors. In addition, by bringing forward the school calendar to the beginning of September, it brought forward the times of the FP, leaving thousands of students without enrolling a month after starting classes.
With the educational system turned upside down, he had to deal with the decision of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) that imposed that all schools and institutes had to teach at least 25% of Spanish. A ruling ratified by the Supreme Court at the end of 2021 and that would enter into force in June 2022. Cambray publicly said that it would not be applied and that his department was working to combat it. However, it was the political parties that saved the situation, designing a new law that made the sentence "inapplicable". The minister now had to comply with what that law indicates (change the linguistic projects of the centers adapting them to the sociocultural surveys of the students).
The drop in the use of Catalan in schools, on the other hand, was linked to the Catalan plan led by the Department of Culture.
It is worth noting, as positive aspects, the reduction of ratios in P-3 in most public schools in Catalonia, and part of the subsidized ones, and the free P-2 (although without negotiating it with the municipalities that co-finance it). Two good measures for the sector.
"It is an honor to have served the country as Minister of Education", said the minister a few minutes ago.
"Improving and transforming education, always thinking of the students, has been the only objective", he continued. "Making necessary and courageous decisions at a complex time."
Gonzàlez-Cambray thanked his team that was still with him, indicating that the progress would last.
He puts an end to his stage with a personal explanation about his mandate: "I didn't want to be a political professional. Only to serve the country. Making things happen".
