Less quality and liberty” “

Disappointment and apprehension are being felt in the Spanish Church after the first go ahead to the new law on education (LOE) in Parliament. The lower chamber (Congreso de los Diputados) voted in its favour on 15 December. This law, say the Spanish bishops, “guarantees neither freedom of teaching, nor the choice of parents”. It is also “state-controlled”. The Spanish Church, in reaction against it, calls for a “great national pact” on education and hopes that it may be possible to make some changes to the law, which now passes to the Senate for its approval. According to the bishops, the 96 amendments incorporated in the LOE by the Commission of education of the Congreso de los Diputados “do not make good the inadequacies of the text”. In any case, they declare, “it is still possible to improve it”. RIGHTS OF PARENTS NOT ADEQUATELY GUARANTEED. The amended LOE ( Ley orgánica de educación), write the bishops, “continues to be a legislative text that does not guarantee, as it ought, the rights relating to the freedom of teaching which parents ought to enjoy”. In the new law there is a “state-controlled conception of education as public service as if it were an original right of the State and a task that is primarily incumbent on it”. The bishops deplore the fact that parents cannot, under the new law, choose the educational project that best accords with their beliefs. They also criticise the new subject in the syllabus called “Education in Citizenship” because it continues to be compulsory for all schools and all pupils, and therefore “the possibility remains that the State may impose on everyone, through this means, a moral education outside the free choice of parents and schools”. The law, say the bishops, “is not inspired by the principle of subsidiarity, according to which the public authorities should regulate the necessary conditions so that society may exercise for itself the right and duties that belong to it”. RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. As far as religious education in schools is concerned, the bishops contest that the new amendments “do not recognise in a satisfactory manner the commitments established between the State and the Catholic Church”. Religious education, moreover, “remains without the recognition that the provision of it should be guaranteed to those who freely choose it”, or that it ought to enjoy parity with all others. “The reasons for concern are therefore grave”, say the bishops, though they continue to hold out a hope: “We are still in time” to find an agreement and consensus. “For our part – they conclude – we once again hold out our hand for dialogue and the search for just solutions”. READY ALSO FOR CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION. “We are sad and very worried”, comments Sister MARÍA ROSA DE LA CIERVA Y DE HOCES, general secretary of the Ecclesiastical Province of Madrid, in a briefing to SIR. According to De la Cierva, who is also a member of the State School Council, the “great losers” in this new law “are the state schools”. “The law is a step backwards and what I am most sorry about is that the state schools will especially suffer as a result of it”. With the new law, for example, students can easily declare a strike. “That means that a father, who takes his son to school, will not have the certainty that he will remain there the whole day, though it’s clear that pupils are not workers and ought not to trigger these mechanisms”. It is also clear, according to Sister Maria Rosa, that schools “will lose in quality and in liberty” as a result of the new law. In her view, if there are no other alternatives, “we ought to stage another public protest”, like the great public demonstration in Madrid on 12 November. Sister María Rosa De la Cierva thinks that the LOE “does not guarantee the right of parents to choose the best school for their children, in accordance with their own religious and moral principles”. “This law lowers the quality of teaching”, she warns. One solution could be to urge all dioceses to adopt a policy of “conscientious objection”, for example on the compulsory subject “Education in Citizenship” introduced by the new law. THE REACTIONS OF THE EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATIONS. “It’s not our educational reform, nonetheless improvements to it were made during the parliamentary process that permit us to continue in the search for greater consensus”, comment the Catholic educational organizations of Spain, EYG, CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS OF CATALONIA, FERE-CECA, FSIE AND EDUCATIONAL SERVICES OF CATALONIA. The same associations say they do not agree about some measures of the new law, including its failure to respect “the autonomy of schools (the law continues to have an interventionist approach, with negative repercussions on quality of teaching) and its system of funding”, but they note some improvements. These include the “opportunity for families to choose schools” for their children, the “greater guarantees of the adequacy of state funding to cover the costs of teaching while maintaining its condition of being cost-free”. The improvement of education, emphasise the organizations, “demands direct measures of support to families, the provision of complementary educational activities and proper educational use of the means of social communication”.