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Education in Spain is a broad and extended topic. Although the federal form of government in the country resides in Madrid, and is lead by the prime minister Mariano Rajoy, the country is divided within 17 autonomous regions that have smaller forms of government within each one. This leads to some schools in Spain teaching Spanish in the particular dialect from each region, such as in Catalonia, the Basque country, Galicia and more.

The Spanish schooling system is divided within three categories: public schools, private schools and state-funded private schools. Regardless of public schools being completely funded by the state, thus free of charge for the students who attend such schools, class materials, books and sometimes uniforms still need to be paid with citizens’ own money.

Sunken within the 2008 economic crisis, the European country of Spain has just now started to recover its economy and generate interest, breaking the loop that has positioned the country at the second highest unemployment rate within the European Union, Greece taking the first place. The sector that has been most affected by the economic crisis of the past several years has been public education in Spain. This issue has been a notoriously increasing one since the economic crisis started, due to extreme budget cuts on the public schooling system within the European country.

Prime minister Mariano Rajoy declared José Ignacio Wert as the minister for education in the year of 2011, and from then to 2015, when Wert was substituted by Iñigo Méndez de Vigo, education was greatly affected. From the year 2012 to 2013, public schools’ teaching systems declined when sharp cuts forced the government to leave up to 25,000 teachers unemployed. Public universities’ tuition fees increased by 66 percent, taking Spanish citizens out on the street to protest the dreadful management that increased the numbers of people who could not afford education for their families.

The main consequence regarding these issues has been the increase of school dropouts, which stood at an alarming rate of 25 percent in 2014, the highest school dropout rate in the European Union. However, there is good news. Even with high levels of poverty, education in Spain was ranked as having the 12th lowest inequality gap for students of all the countries in Europe.

Spanish residents fight for a better schooling system and education in Spain everyday. The lack of teachers, economic resources and the increase of students per class have lead to a series of educational strikes in order to make the Spanish government understand and respond to the gravity of the issue.

– Paula Gibson

Photo: Flickr