"It is not necessary for me to explain the difficulties we have in these territorial services and, throughout Catalonia, to cover many specialties due to the lack of teachers, so I remind you of some possibilities", heads a letter that the educational centers of the region of Barcelona recently received. It exposes a series of recommendations such as the possibility that the management teams look for possible substitutes, with the necessary requirements, or even without any of them, assessing their suitability.
There are no teachers to replace the casualties. In some cases, children spend months without a teacher. This is a situation that already occurred last year, but which has worsened this year to worrying limits, agree in affirming Jesús Martín, from UGT, and Marga Romartínez, from CC.OO.
Since January, at the Gabriela Mistral Institute, in Sant Vicenç dels Horts, they have been without a math, English and visual arts teacher, this one from Christmas to Easter. And the issue of computer science teachers in FP (as in other specialties) is an agony. At Narcís Monturiol they have spent a month without a mathematics teacher, and the classes have been supplied by the management. In high school, the losses hurt more because each week is a precious asset. At the Llauna institute, in Badalona, they disrupted schedules in the middle of the course, adapting to the situation.
When a teacher communicates a leave or leave, the data is entered into a template that automatically designates a substitute, the first on the list of the job bank in that specialty. If it is not covered, it becomes "difficult to cover" and the Department of Education, through the territorial services, looks for candidates in other ways.
In previous courses, the "difficult covers" corresponded to mathematics, Catalan and English for ESO. "Now there are almost no subjects that are not difficult to cover", says a director of the Baix Llobregat.
The problem focuses on the stages of ESO, Baccalaureate and FP. “The department is working to improve the situation, but in the short term it is complicated. If the addresses that have sites that have not been covered for a long time value an alternative that is not contemplated in this circular or wish to discuss the situation of the center with the personnel service, let's talk. And I say let's talk because I don't have the powers to multiply the number of teachers”.
Faced with this situation, the directors pull the agenda, contact teacher networks, ask if anyone knows someone on social networks, call acquaintances or professionals who would not have thought of giving classes (to teach language you need a degree and C2 level), but that he could solve a withdrawal by expressing the commitment to take the master's degree in the next two years. "If you find one, tell him to run to territorial services," says a center director sotto voce.
In fact, every year there is a strong demand to take the secondary school master's degree, essential to teach. But universities offer few places. The next academic year there will be 2,700 in total in Catalonia, 526 more than in this academic year.
Computer science teachers in FP can extend their hours with extra hours, but this exception, adopted only for this course, cannot be applied to other subjects with urgent need, such as mathematics, physics and chemistry or technology, because it requires an agreement from the Government that has not occurred.
However, in practice, this is what happens. The professors cover the classes of the absent ones, or with mere guards or giving material in an extraordinary way. Thus, days, weeks or months. And this stresses the faculty, the families and also affects the teacher who is outside. Jordi Colomer, a mathematics teacher, had an injury over the weekend and ran early on Monday to be discharged and immediately start the process. He explains that he was nervous if they were going to give it to him for two weeks (14 days) because they already know that if it is not 15 days they will not send a substitute. “Even though you send them homework, you always have the feeling of leaving them hanging and worrying about a particular student,” he says. "On the return, you find them unmarsed and it is difficult for them to get back into rhythm."
"We do not want students to be the losers," says Carla Soler, a Catalan language teacher at the La Llauna institute in Badalona, with 800 students and 70 teachers. In her case, the students received a double ration of Catalan classes for the three weeks that the Spanish teacher was on leave. And now that he has reincorporated, he will give more Spanish. This, in exchange for the effort of the teachers. In high school, every week counts, because they have selectivity, Education knows that, which seems to prioritize substitutions at this stage, according to Soler, also a high school coordinator.
"Me, and the head of studies, we began to teach mathematics at the cost of directing hours," says the director of a Barcelona center. The alternative was that they lose half a quarter. But what is removed from one site is lost from the other. Or add more hours.
Educació has announced that as of September the interim will not be able to choose by municipality but by region, to increase the possibilities of substitutions. The move has outraged unions who believe it hurts people without a vehicle.
What has led to this situation? Is it a question of more casualties or less attractiveness of the profession? Bad planning? Has there been a special situation?
In the absence of responses from the Department of Education, the directors of the centers estimate that the losses have not been greater than in other years and that, on the other hand, the course has been marked by the lack of teachers, more pronounced from January. Precisely in that month, the staff was reinforced with 3,500 teachers, to compensate for the reduction in school hours agreed with the unions with the aim of ending the strike called by the advance of the calendar. This could have emptied the job board.
"In June there are oppositions, so many teachers prefer to resign or freeze their number in the stock market to study," says Víctor del Arco, spokesman for Pindoc, an association of temporary workers who denounces that the criteria of the merit contest to stabilize the places have left out to teachers with long experience.
Àlex Blasco: "We are on the front line in front of the parents"
Center directors are caught between two fires. On the one hand, they represent the educational administration, helpless in the face of the lack of teachers in many specialties, and, on the other, their function is to guarantee the quality of their students' learning, accounting for it to the parents.
At the Jaume Almera center, it has not been possible to cover losses of mathematics, Catalan, English and Spanish teachers throughout this course. This is a secondary and high school institute, located in Vilassar de Dalt, which educates around 500 students and has a staff of 50 teachers.
The Catalan teacher was away for a month. The Spanish one, two. And English was a short-term loss. The longest absences were those of two mathematics teachers. One of more than two months and another, of almost three months.
“Can you imagine the nervousness of the parents?” asks the director Àlex Blasco, especially about mathematics. "Every day we looked at the adjudications and we spoke with the territorial services that told us that they had no one in the stock market, that they could not cover themselves," he continues. “But as a principal, you are on the front line with the parents. No matter how much you understand them, you can't do anything if the department doesn't give you a solution and it doesn't give it to you, not because they don't want to, but because there is no one in the substitution pool, ”he says.
“What we did is rearrange dedications, halfway through the course, with what it costs, because the teachers have the subject scheduled. And, obviously, it has a cost because what you put in one place you take away from another”.
Meanwhile, Blasco assumed the role of headhunter, a new task for management, already tired of adding new functions to those that already determine their contract.
Educació gives the placet so that if the directors find a possible candidate with the appropriate degree, they present him to the stock market. "I have spent part of the course contacted in networks of alumni, in the town hall and municipal platforms looking for teachers who could do substitutions without being a personnel manager and I am not a personnel manager."
“Not having a teacher causes a lot of anxiety in families, of course.” In addition, in mathematics, the problem was in the 2nd year of ESO and in high school, with "all the pressure" that students suffer from the university entrance exams.
The third term of high school is very short, it ends at the beginning of May –next week–, and you have to discount the days of Easter so that the programming is already very tight to time. Every day of missing class discounts and that generates anxiety, both for those who are not very comfortable and for those who are looking for a grade.
In this context, not all families understood the difficulty of management. "They only see that their children are still without a teacher and they attribute it to poor management." So some parents organized to take action, including denouncing the principal as the person most responsible for the disaster. "In the end, about twenty parents wrote a letter dissatisfied with my performance that they sent to the territorial services," explains Blasco. Fortunately, thanks to pressure from the families, the two substitutions arrived in less than two days. And the thing came to nothing.
