Spanish PM’s main advisory body asks State “to reconsider” obliging Catalonia to teach in Spanish in privately-owned schools

The State Council, which is the Spanish Government’s main advisory body called on the Ministry of Education Thursday “to entirely reconsider” the decree in the Education Reform that obliges the Catalan Government to pay the private tuition of students who request to be taught in Spanish if that is not available through the public system. The top advisory body considered that the costs of the measure had not been seriously calculated and that limitations have not been included. The Catalan Minister for Education, Irene Rigau, appealed to the Spanish Ministry of Education to remove this provision from the new Reform. The latest disagreement is part of an ongoing conflict between the Spanish and the Catalan Governments regarding Catalan being the main language of instruction in schools.

Speaking before the Catalan Parliament, Irene Rigau believes that the opinion of the State Council represents a “huge blow” to the Spanish Ministry’s plans. The Catalan Education Minister believes that the Ministry should give up developing this decree in the Education Reform (known with the acronym LOMCE) because “it is clear that both Catalan and Spanish children in Catalonia are learning well.”

According to the Catalan Public Television TV3, the State Council stated that the draft decree, which requires that the Catalan Government pay for the private education of those students who request to be taught in Spanish in those places where it is not available through the public school system, has not been seriously examined in terms of costs. The State Council is a consultative body of the Spanish Government and its opinions are not binding.

However, Rigau believes that the Spanish Ministry should amend the draft of the LOMCE, as she believes that the State Council sees “a problem of unconstitutionality” in some respects. In any case, the Catalan Minister for Education has declared that she will not apply this decree, “because we are certain that it is inapplicable, unnecessary, lacking in technical quality and the result of an obsession”, referring to Spanish nationalism’s historical persecution of the Catalan language and imposition of Spanish in its place. In fact, when he was presenting the new law before the Parliament, the Spanish Education Minister José Ignacio Wert stated that his “aim” was “to Hispanicise Catalan pupils”. On Thursday, Rigau once again insisted that Catalan pupils have “amply demonstrated” they “achieve proficiency” in both Spanish and Catalan.