• Education Families ask for the start of the school year to be brought forward: "Schools should open on September 1"

The president of the

Community of Madrid

, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has been open this Wednesday to "advance the start of the school year to September 1", as families claim to be able to reconcile their work life with childcare.

Given the debate reflected by EL MUNDO on the duration of the summer vacations and the difficulties in combining them with work schedules, Ayuso has shown herself willing to speak "in a leisurely manner" with the educational community in order to offer " solutions" and "collaboration" to households.

The professors argue that, as they join on September 1, they cannot start teaching immediately, because they do not have time to prepare the schedules.

Therefore, they need a few days of margin, especially this course, in which the new curricula of the Celaá Law force them to change and restructure a good part of the contents, as well as the methodologies.

Families, for their part, usually have exhausted their vacations by September and have to make all kinds of arrangements to leave their young children with care.

The course does not usually start until the second or third week of September, according to the Autonomous Communities (

Andalusia

,

Extremadura

,

Asturias

, the

Balearic Islands

and the

Valencian Community

do not do so until the 12th) when in other European countries it starts at the beginning of the month, although They usually end in June before they do in Spain.

In the end, the 175 school days in Spain are within the European average, but vacations are concentrated more days in summer.

Catalonia has been the first autonomy to be sensitive to families and this year the start of the course has been brought forward a week.

The schoolchildren returned to school on Monday the 5th when in other years they did not do so until after the Day

of September 11

.

But Madrid would be the first autonomy that would take the advance until the beginning of the month, something that has never happened in the school supported by public funds.

Ayuso has expressed this Wednesday: "Families need collaboration, taking into account that the luckiest get to have 20 days of vacation, while schools are closed much longer. Families have more and more difficulties to reconcile", has pointed out the Madrid leader speaking to journalists at the

Iker Casillas special education school in Torrejón de Ardoz

, where she opened the school year together with counselor

Enrique Ossorio

.

"We all have to make a great effort to offer solutions; although we have to do it slowly, now that we have the whole course ahead of us", he pointed out, aware that Catalonia's decision has cost him a lot of criticism for making unilaterally and even a strike by the teachers, which has finally been called off after the Generalitat promised an additional hiring of 3,500 staff and the reduction of one teaching hour.

Ayuso has stressed that the school is an "institution" and everything that is done to improve it "is good", although "it must be done slowly and in a thoughtful manner" because she is not in favor of making decisions "by flying the pen, according to the circumstance, according to time, without consensus".

"We have to listen to families and the educational community and then make a decision as a government," he said.

The Senate urges to prevent Ayuso's "gourmet scholarships"

The Senate Plenary approved this Wednesday, with the votes against the PP and PNV, a motion urging the Government to implement measures that guarantee the maintenance of the principle of equity in the granting of educational scholarships, according to reports Europe Press.

The motion charges against what they call "gourmet scholarships" with which the Community of Madrid "will pay for studies in private centers for families with up to 100,000 euros of annual income."

This measure seeks to avoid, according to the approved text, that "school vouchers" are treated as "scholarships linked to equal opportunities", which, according to the initiative, have been convened in Autonomous Communities, such as the Community of Madrid, and that they are granted "to high-income families to continue their studies in private centers."

For this reason, it also asks the Government that in the Education Statistics of the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training do not collect or count this type of "checks" as scholarships.

The initiative, promoted by the PSOE, has had the support of ERC, Ciudadanos, Teruel Exists, the Regionalist Party of Cantabria, Más Madrid, Geroa Bai and Compromís, while Vox, Eh Bildu, Canarian Coalition, Unión del Pueblo Navarro ( UPN) and Junts, have decided to abstain.

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