Barcelona's Municipal Education Council shows its concern about the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, in a declaration approved during its last full meeting, which was held on 14 October. It also calls for focusing all our efforts, as well as our technological and human resources, on ensuring that no one is left behind. The declaration was proposed by the city's Schools and Covid-19 Committee, created to closely monitor the start of this school year. The committee is made up of representatives from educational and health administrations, and all the education community.
In this regard, the Municipal Education Council’s declaration denounces structural problems in the educational system revealed by the pandemic, such as the structural underfunding of the public educational system, insufficient investment, school segregation, the digital gap, ratios that are too high and a lack of a strong ties between schools and their surrounding areas. It states that these problems must be tackled in order to continue transforming and improving education beyond the pandemic.
With regard to out-of-school activities, the Education Council stresses the importance of recovering afternoon leisure activities as soon as possible, while carrying them out under appropriate preventative health measures. It also states that we need to seek a balance between essential health prevention, the creation of meaningful, high-quality learning spaces, the depth of relationships, and closeness and affection at all stages, especially in the education of younger children. The Education Council notes that preventing contagion must not undermine the overall health of the school environment and, in this sense, it recommends reviewing protocols and making them more flexible as the pandemic wanes.
The declaration also refers to the tremendous efforts made by the management teams of educational centres since the onset of the pandemic and reveals its concern for their emotional health and the risk of those teams burning out during the start of the school year. The Council therefore asks for sufficient resources and support to continue dealing with this exceptional school situation in an appropriate way.
The Council therefore calls for reducing the amount of bureaucracy and health management the school teams must deal with; improving procedures with unified IT applications and procuring the stability and simplification of protocols. Similarly, they also ask for sufficient teaching and support staff, in order to facilitate the organisation of reduced, isolated groups and achieving the maximum sizes for the stable coexistence groups recommended by the health authorities; resolving the rapid substitution of teaching staff, and continuing to improve the circuits and coordination for detecting and managing cases.
A start of term without any big spikes
The Education Council celebrates the fact that all the city’s schools opened at the start of the school year and highlights the fact that the incidence of Covid-19 cases in children and adolescents has not increased since the summer; to date, there have not been any Covid-19 spikes related to educational centres, and that this has been possible thanks to the efforts of all the groups in the education community, and they ask people not to lower their guard either within or outside school life. The declaration also highlights the good general attitude, the responsibility and the great capacity for adaptation and for pulling together shown by the children, adolescents and families.
The importance of in-person schooling
The declaration underlines the fact that there is once again a wide social consensus about the importance of in-person schooling as an essential part of city life, also in times of COVID, and about the shared objective of making education possible with the maximum amount of in-person schooling and the maximum amount of prevention.
Barcelona’s Municipal Education Council acts as a consultative municipal body with respect to Barcelona City Council and the Municipal Institute of Education. The full meeting is chaired by the Mayor and made up of all the district councillors-presidents, along with representatives municipal groups, and from the various administrations, educational organisations, school management teams, teachers, families and students, as well as staff from the administration and services.