In Spain the pupils who have opted for Catholic religious education in public and private schools amount to 79.3% (equivalent to 3,507,986 of the total 4,421,425). The figures, referring to the 2004-2005 school year, were published in recent days by the Bishops’ Commission for teaching and catechesis, which publishes an annual report on the option for the teaching of Catholic religion in school. The percentage has risen over that for the previous year (when 77.5% of pupils opted for Catholic RE): a fact that the Commission considers “very significant bearing in mind the difficulties that the Catholic faith is going through in schools”. In public schools the percentage is the same as last year, i.e. 72.2%. But there is a difference between primary education (84.7%) and compulsory secondary education (53.5%), which has dropped 8 percentage points over the previous year. “The academic conditions under which this teaching is given at so critical an age as that of secondary schoolchildren points out the Commission condition the free choice of this subject. The discrimination is well known: while students of religion receive religious education, the rest of the pupils take classes without any academic value, without any kind of assessment and without any need to study, in the best of cases”. The situation in the Catholic schools is clearly different: 99.5% of the pupils, equivalent to 1,983,820 opt for Catholic RE. In schools of “civil entitlement” the percentage is 81.7%, a one-point rise over the previous year. “The awareness of parents and pupils of the transcendent value of Catholic religious education concludes the Commission is becoming increasingly clear in every type of school”.
