I had Moisés Pérez as a student, and you could already see in him a young man with a vocation to embrace the methodology of investigative journalism, a rare genre in the media landscape. His book El negoci de les aules, Private and concerted education in the Valencian Country (Alfons el Magnànim) responds to this interest in delving deeper into reality, in this case in an area as complex and controversial as Education.
From the reading of his work not everything is negative nor everything positive in the object of study and it offers formulas for possible coexistence between the public and the private, marking, yes, some priorities. This book is part of the Josep Torrent Research Journalism grant from the Union of Journalists.
Let's go straight to the title. Is education a business in the Valencian Community?
Yes, clearly. You just have to go to the figures from the survey on private education in Spain carried out by the National Institute of Statistics, corresponding to the 2014-2015 financial year, the latest available in the statistical series, to get an idea. According to this survey, the total operating result is 385 million euros at the state level, while in the Valencian Country it would be 64 million euros. In addition, and as can be seen in the journey that I take in the book, a part of the schools obtain benefits from their activity.
Although in general terms concerted and private education is a business in the Valencian territory, there are differences depending on the nature of the center. From the analysis of the different educational centers, it is observed more frequently the obtaining of benefits in the subsidized and secular private centers. In the case of the religious, there is more variety of economic results and, sometimes, some of them end up having losses. Even so, it must be pointed out that for a part of the network of subsidized religious schools, it is a business with ideological ends.
Complaints that during the 20 years of PP governments there was a clear will to benefit the concerted school to the detriment of the public one.
It is evident that the PP has tried to increase the portion of private and concerted schools in the Valencian autonomy during its twenty years at the head of the Generalitat. Not surprisingly, an educational philosophy was imposed where the public was subsidiary to the concerted one, and not the other way around, as theoretically any party that is committed to the Welfare State and the reduction of social gaps should promote. An example of this bet was the school map, where cuts in public units and an increase in private-concerted units were projected in the main Valencian cities. The paradigm was Alcoi, where in 1996 the penetration of the private-subsidized school was 18% and in the 2020/2021 academic year it stood at 51%.
Another of the measures that show this will of the PP was the concertation of a post-compulsory stage such as the baccalaureate. The concertation process, where 89% of the schools benefited in its first year were of a religious nature, coincided with cuts in public units. It was done for ideological interests and not for an educational need, as denounced by different organizations in the educational sector.
On concerted education there are many cases and typologies. There is a religious concert, but there is also a secular concert and even cooperatives that also teach exclusively in Valencian. Can you judge the concerted one in general?
No, and it is an aspect that I highlight in the book. The concerted school is not monolithic. It is plural and, even within the religious network, there are notable differences between the different schools. Making a general judgment about the concerted school as a whole would not be rigorous. As you say, a cooperative with teaching mostly in Valencian has a school model that is much closer to the public system and highly commendable compared to educational centers that segregate by sex or proclaim ultra-conservative values, that is, far from the ideological coordinates of our contemporary societies.
Can a good subsidized school coexist with a good public school or is it incompatible?
I think it's possible. In fact, education cooperatives, in general, would be an example of the coexistence of a good subsidized school with a quality public system. Of course, as long as it is clear that the axis of the educational system must be the public school and certain measures are promoted. There cannot be an adequate coexistence if there are elements that allow a social filter in the subsidized school. I am referring to the voluntary fees, which, according to reports from the private school employers, end up being mandatory and, consequently, prevent access to students from low-income environments to private schools supported with public funds.
An issue that continues to be a source of political confrontation is that of the so-called "freedom of choice." You point out that it is not the parents who ultimately choose, but the schools.
The version proclaimed by the PP and, more radically, by the far-right Vox on freedom of choice produces this B-side, a perversion of freedom of choice itself. Both the popular and the ultra-right defend that to guarantee the freedom of educational choice, a school admissions model based on the single district is needed. For this model to work, the administration should promote that all families without exception have the same transportation resources. If this does not occur, the result is obvious: the families with more resources are the ones that can choose and the others with less are left in a situation of unequal opportunities.
In addition, there are research works focused on the Valencian reality, prepared from interviews with students from centers of different types of ownership and management, where it is observed how not all families have the same information and ability to choose a school. What does that lead to? Once again, it is the families with more resources that have an advantageous situation. But there is more: the theoretically voluntary quotas, the possible payments for uniforms or other school expenses also curtail the vaunted freedom of choice that the PP and the Vox reactionaries claim to defend.
That is where the debate on education as a motor for social ascent enters.
I believe that education, beyond the ideological preferences of parents, fulfills two very important social functions: on the one hand, it is a mechanism for social advancement, for equal opportunities in a society where the distance between classes is increasing; and on the other, it should be an element of cohesion, of mixing between students from different social classes. There is a study by IVIE and the BBVA Foundation that points out how private schools, which would include the concerted one, concentrate very few students from disadvantaged backgrounds. In the case of public schools, according to that report, it is the other way around.
Here the problem of the right of parents to choose a center for their children always arises. Is it fair that they can choose if they have the option?
It is a great debate to raise, but it seems very difficult to put on the table. The Spanish Constitution shields that right thanks to a victory of the bloc of the rights in the negotiation of the Magna Carta. Now, I think that as a society we should question ourselves if the important thing about education is that the schools that parents choose respond to the beliefs - whatever they may be - of the parents or there are other more decisive issues.
The pact between the PP and Vox aims to recover the parental PIN. What real effects can this measure have?
At the moment, it is a kind of parental censorship only for extracurricular activities, so its practical effects, from the outset, can be limited and circumscribed to specific cases. However, the mere fact of contemplating it already opens a dangerous and worrying precedent. Not surprisingly, this censorship mechanism is a parental imposition, with the aim that their children are deprived of knowledge and values anchored in respect for freedoms and human rights. And that, it must be emphasized, is very serious.
The parental pin is born with a censoring prism, so that families prevent their children from receiving knowledge in public school, for example, respect for sexual diversity. And all, of course, while educational freedom is claimed, but with an interpretation of subsidizing schools with strictly ultra-conservative values. The parental pin is a mechanism that aims to curtail the ability of public schools to instruct in democratic values and respect for human rights.
The Botànic initially had problems with the concerted school, which even manifested itself in the street, but later everything was pacified.
With the arrival of the left to power in 2015, the concerted and private school mobilized, firstly, with a preventive intention, to gain muscle to socially and mediatically condition the performance of a Botànic that precisely tried to get the schools to stop to choose the families, as was the case during the PP era. The great manifestation of the concerted one, however, was in the courts. His victory against the rationalization of the agreement of the baccalaureate that the progressive forces did, as well as the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, froze that conflict of the first years.
It is also true that a part of these protests were encouraged by members of the concerted ecosystem and not by the employers, who, at first, had a moderate reaction to the rationalization of the high school concertation. Later, and without much margin, they capitalized on the demonstrations and were very active in the courts when the proposal of Vicent Marzà's ministry -in my opinion- could even be classified as liberal.
The left reinforced public education with thousands of teachers. Do you think enough effort was made?
I think that, in general terms, a sufficient effort was made, although there are always deficiencies, pending subjects and issues to improve. As a symptom of the effort made by public education, to turn around the old situation, where the public school was considered a subsidiary of the concerted and private schools, is the ranking of the most requested schools. If the concerted one won by a substantial difference during the last course of the PP government, with the left in the Generalitat Valenciana, that has been reversed, with the public school dominating that classification. Likewise, and it is not a trivial question, it is necessary to highlight the growth of public schooling for infants thanks to the investment in classrooms from 0 to 3 years of age.
A key issue is the presence of Valencian in the classroom. The multilingualism model has not even convinced many parents who wanted Valencian for their children and yearn for the two-line model that existed before. What is your opinion?
I believe that the first multilingualism decree was intelligent, it was adapted to the plural reality of the Valencian territory and, furthermore, it could mean an advance of Valencian in the classroom. It is true that the model that generates the most consensus among language scholars is linguistic immersion, but the first decree was a very interesting system that could provide better results and avoid the defects that the line model might have, which, and it must be said, it also had positive effects.
The latest version, highly conditioned by some robes that have unjustifiably dressed as sociolinguists, accumulates risks and makes the system dependent on the will of the ruling administration. Many voices with experience in defense of Valencian warn of a possible regression, since the slight gains in hours in Valencian in certain urban areas come at the cost of weakening education in their own language in the regions with the greatest presence of the language.
