The Generalitat will ask the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) to withdraw the precautionary measures that force it to continue financing schools that only admit students of a single gender. The Government spokesperson, Patrícia Plaja, has indicated that the legal office of the Generalitat will define the best strategy, "if we can achieve that next year there will no longer be any classroom or school that segregates by sex, we will do it, because the final objective is that these types of centers disappear or at least that they are not financed with public money”.
These declarations of intent, accompanied by an article by the Minister of Education, Josep Gonzàlez-Cambray, published in today's edition of El Periódico, in the same vein, come a week after the Constitutional Court rejected Vox's appeal against the new Spanish Education law (Lomloe, better known as the 'Celaá law') that endorses the withdrawal of these concerts from schools that differentiate by sex.
The judgment of the TC has not yet been published in the BOE, so the spokesperson has shown prudence, stating that it will be necessary to read the fine print before making decisions on the matter.
In this sense, Plaja explained that "according to published information, the TC will agree with the Generalitat, accepting that educational centers that still separate their students according to whether they are boys or girls should not receive public aid". These centers "do not favor inclusion or coexistence and instead feed sexism and gender prejudice that is costing us so much as a society to combat."
The spokeswoman recalled that the Government "has defended from the first day that we do not share this educational model and that therefore we would not voluntarily allocate even one public euro to this type of center, that if someone believes that they should continue to exist, they should be financed with money private but not with that of all Catalans”.
The Government's fight against the financing of concerted centers that differentiate by sex began years ago.
In 2020, the Government announced that, with the entry into force of Lomloe, it would withdraw funding from centers that only educate boys or girls and that are mostly Opus Dei.
Faced with the possibility of not receiving funding, eight of the ten Catalan centers agreed to adapt and become mixed. But two schools appealed to the TSJC asking for precautionary measures with which to continue receiving public funds while the matter was not resolved. And the court granted them.
"Over and over again, justice insisted on endorsing a pedagogical formula anchored in other times," Cambray laments in an unusual letter to the newspaper.
The minister wonders: "Why should we allocate everyone's money to a black and white school model, a redoubt of the most conservative Catholic education and which science has shown does not favor the student body or the society where it is inserted? ?" , write the. And he criticizes that this type of school "feeds gender prejudices and sexism and does not even favor academic results as its defenders proclaimed."
Fapel, the federation that represents the groups of these centers, consider that the minister manifests "great ignorance" of this school model, to which he "gratuitously" attributes a series of qualifications that "are not true in any case".
Fapel points out that the TC itself, in its informative note, endorses "the absolute constitutional validity of the differentiated education model", which the minister denigrates.
And he adds that the TC also outlines the ideological component of an administration's decision to agree or not to agree on schools, models or initiatives that they do not like. "We have been denouncing this point at length in recent years, attributing an ideological and even sectarian charge, against educational plurality and the freedom of choice of center for families on equal terms," the statement said.
"Many more reports, studies and analyzes can be presented that absolutely refute what the article, sponsored, cited by the minister that highlights the validity and value of this model, even in government schools."
Finally, the federation attributes the article to the electoral campaign and to the fact that "the minister must be able to exhibit some triumph, given his lack of popularity and results among all sectors of the educational community, for different well-founded reasons." And remember aspects such as the "bankruptcy" of inclusive education, the drop in the results of basic skills, school failure and early dropout, and other issues related to the climate in centers or the discouragement of teachers.
