This Wednesday, September 6, the students of infant, primary and compulsory secondary education in Catalonia return to the classroom. It is expected that there will be 1,052,623 students. The 2023-2024 school year begins with a smaller school population, due to the decrease in births in recent years, and with an increase in the teaching staff of about 1,200 teaching posts. This increase will bring the number of teachers to 81,335, the highest figure reached so far.
Another novelty of the course is the implementation of the 100-euro school voucher campaign for the purchase of textbooks and school supplies. 357,456 families (80% of the total) have already used this aid. The objective of the campaign is to help alleviate the rise in prices of expenses related to schooling and thus mitigate the impact of the increase in the cost of living on families.
Free infant 2 is implemented for the second consecutive year to promote family reconciliation and benefit students at the earliest ages. The increase in students from 0 to 3 years old was 3.1 points in the last school year, compared to the previous year (2021-2022), the first year of implementation of free admission.
This year also began the second course to reduce ratios in Infant 3, with 4,335 groups from the Servei d'Educació de Catalunya – adding Infant 3 and Infant 4 – with a ratio of a maximum of 20 students per classroom. In Infant 3 it represents 86% of the percentage of the public school and 66% of the concerted one.
The Generalitat continues to implement the measures of the Plan against school segregation, and allocates 80 million euros for this academic year to the most vulnerable students in Infant 3, Infant 4, and 1st and 2nd ESO. This figure represents almost double the investment compared to last year.
Regarding the inclusive school, Educació invests another 25 million euros compared to the previous budget, with the incorporation of 355 new professionals. In the field of coeducation and coexistence, the figure of the coeducation, coexistence and emotional well-being referent is launched with more than 3,400 referents, one for each educational center.
The 2023-2024 will be the first school year in which the centers that segregate by gender in compulsory secondary education will not be financed with public funds.
This year Catalonia will have 9 new public educational centers: two schools, two institutes and five school institutes. These are the Vallcarca (Barcelona) and Nou Alcarràs (Segrià) institutes. The Escuela Nueva in Badía del Vallés and Campllong. And the schools of Badía del Vallés, Feixes (Terrassa), El Cabrerès (L'Esquirol), Mossèn Joan Batlles (Blanes) and Josep Pous i Pagès (Figueres).
Four subsidized centers up to now are also integrated into the public network of the Department of Education: Manresa, Sant Felip Neri (Barcelona), Cent Fonts-Sant Josep (Sant Hilari Sacalm) and Segre School (Barcelona). With these integrations, more than 1,700 new places for public education are achieved.
Measures to promote Catalan in schools and institutes continue, and new ones are implemented. A total of 800 centers will be trained in the ULAE workshops on language use in education and ten measures will be deployed to deal with the decline in the use of Catalan at school. In addition, 50 centers are beginning the Pilot Plan to improve school libraries to promote the reading habit and reading in Catalan.
