The Provincial Education Delegate for Granada,, Antonio Jesús Castillo, has resigned after plans to reshuffle rural schools ran up against strong opposition.

The Junta’s plan was to take Secondary Education away from rural schools and transfer these school children to larger, nearby towns, incorporating them into the larger Secondary Schools to complete their obligatory education.

At the moment, the first two years of S.E. is done in the villages and the remaining two in the Institutos (Secondary or High Schools)

This, in a effect, not only means that the kids would have to take buses to school, but would also mean a loss of teaching posts in rural communities, and eventually, into the shutting down of rural schools.

The original plan targeted 51 schools just in the province of Granada alone, amongst them Otivar. However the immense opposition from parents, teachers and parent’s association forced the Junta to put off such a decision for at least a year.

Also, of course, the Junta needed a scapegoat, hence the delegate’s resignation.

So what is happening, or nearly happened? The fact is that the new Junta wanted to slide education cuts through, disguised as ‘reshuffling.’ However, another fact is that there are fewer and fewer children in villages with around 1,000 inhabitants; Otívar is a case in point. Villages are dying because of low birth rates and because young adults are moving away to find employment rather than farming the land like their parents.

Taking Otívar again as an example, the original schooling in the 60’s and 70’s was provided by the nuns at the convent before Democracy returned. After that, 14 straight years of socialist governments put schooling back in the public sector. Otivar in the late 70s and 80s had two junior schools; one of them with housing for teachers actually attached to the school building.

After all, the Spanish Baby Boom was in full swing by the mid 60s.

Then in the 90’s the school at the top of the village was built and the two lower schools were given over to the Town Hall for extra-curriculum workshops. Now, the top school is emptying with fewer pupil enrolled each year and consequently the Parents’ Association is facing dwindling membership because the kids have moved on down to Almuñécar starting with 2nd and 3rd ESO. If they loose the 3rd and 4th years too…

When the news came out that Otivar’s CP Valle Verde was included within the 51 schools facing class cuts, the Parents’ Association moved heaven and earth, organising protests in the provincial capital along with parents associations from other affected school.

Perhaps the Junta’s move was just a case of “throwing a pebble into the pond to see what it brings up to the surface;” in other words, a tester of public opinion rather than a determined move, in which case the protesting parents outside the administrative building in Granada was confirmation enough that it would be best to let “sleeping dogs lie.”

(News: Otivar, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)