22 Vox Pop COSTA NEWS, April 28-May 4, 2017

Schools that will not teach in SpanishBy José R Pastor, member ofthe Idiomas y Educación as-sociation

From the next school year,the students of Alfaz del Pi andLa Nucía will not be able tostudy in Spanish. Parents willhave to school their children inanother town or register themin a private school so they canstudy in Spanish.

That is the result of the ap-plication of the new decree,misnamed "multilingual",which has been approved by theValencian government on theproposal of the education de-partment, directed by VicentMarzà Conseller from the politi-cal group Compromis, andwhich will be applied from pri-mary school age from the nextschool year and in the success-ive school years in primary, inthe state schools.

Up to now, with decree127/2012 regulating multilin-gualism in non-university edu-cation in the Valencia region,there existed the option ofstudying either in Valencian orCastellano/Spanish, calledPPEV and PPEC (Multi-LingualEducation Program In Valen-cian or Castellano/Spanish),allowing parents to chooseeither option for their children.

With the new decree thispossibility disappears, since theeducation department forcesschools to impose a single lineof education in one same lan-guage for the whole centre.

The new decree anticipatessix levels, which, depending onthe number of hours in Valen-cian, from least to most, callthem Basic 1 and 2, Intermedi-ate 1 and 2, and Advanced 1 and2. This is actually a discrimina-tory decree, and misleading be-cause what it really pretends incovert form is linguistic immer-sion in Valencian, because itdoes not allow the school tochoose a level with less Valen-cian than that already in thecurrent programme, that is tosay, one always has to choose alevel with an equal amount ofValencian or higher, because

Basic level 1 is only applicablein Spanish-speaking municipal-ities outside the Valencia re-gion.

Advanced level 2, which isthe one that offers most Eng-lish, cannot be chosen since, asconfirmed by the education de-partment, there are not enoughteachers trained in English.

It intends to raise levels fromtime to time to reach Advanced,but does not anticipate goingback a level, so in the end the le-vels in the decree will be ex-ceeded; and above all it is trickybecause, as several centres havealready been denounced pub-licly, the computer system ofthe education departmentblocks the possibility of choos-ing the Basic level.

It is also discriminatory be-cause it prevents parents fromparticipating in the choice ofthe language of instruction for

their children.It uses English as "linguistic

blackmail", because to receivemore hours in English you haveto opt for the advanced levelswith more Valencian, and onlythese students will receive thecertificates for English and Val-encian, discriminating studentswho have Spanish as a first lan-guage who will therefore not re-ceive those certificates.

With these conditions ofblackmail and discrimination,school councils held meetingswithout consulting parents'opinions, and decided to choosethe Advanced level for schoolsin La Nucía and Alfaz del Pi,that is to say, the level whosepriority language is Valencian,in which most of the subjectswill be taught, relegating Span-ish and English to two subjectseach, and the rest of the cur-riculum will be taught in Valen-cian.

According to the 1983 Valen-cian Law of Use and Teachingof Valencian, La Nucía andAlfaz del Pi are included withinthe towns identified as being ofValencian linguistic predomi-nance, since historically theirpopulations were largely Valen-cian speaking.

At the moment, La Nucía,with 21,164 inhabitants, is rep-resented by 87 differentnationalities, of which 9,022 in-habitants are from other coun-tries, which represents 43% ofthe population.

Alfaz del Pi has 101 differentnationalities among its 22,592inhabitants, of which 12,625 arefrom other countries, whichrepresents 56% of the popu-lation. These are things that em-phasise the cosmopolitan char-acter of these towns, and that is

reflected in the students at theirschools.

Therefore it is paradoxicalthat towns such as La Nucíaand Alfaz del Pi invest a greatdeal of money to make them at-tractive, with sports and cul-tural infrastructures, dedicat-ing a substantial amount of re-sources to the celebration of im-portant events, promoting so-cial and cultural integration ac-tivities - such as the recently cel-ebrated International Day of LaNucía, which was a great suc-cess - with the aim of havingfamilies of all nationalities con-solidate their residence there, inorder to maintain their popu-lation growth.

State schools, which dependon the education department,lead in the opposite directionwhen choosing Valencian astheir first language in all stateschools in these towns. Far frombeing attractive, the immersionin Valencian, will prove a bar-rier for potential families tochoose La Nucía or Alfaz del Pias towns to live in, especiallyforeign families, since theirchildren will not learn Spanishif they do not speak it at home,and will hardly use it at school.

It is absolutely absurd thatin these towns, which are lo-cated in a very important tour-ist area, with a large amount ofboth national and internationaltourism, and where knowledgeof the English language is al-most essential to enter theworkplace, parents cannotchoose for their children to beeducated with a first languageof English and Spanish, andare forced to be educatedmostly in Valencian thanks tothis disastrous decree.

What kind of advantages

can this offer to these childrengrowing up in this touristicarea without learning English?How will knowing how to speakfluent Valencian help them intheir future jobs? With this de-cree the students who stand tobenefit most will be the onestrained in private schools,where they will be able tochoose their first language asEnglish and Spanish. These areglobal languages that willgreatly increase their chancesof joining the work force.

The Idiomas y Educación as-sociation, formed by parents ofstudents of state schools, areworking to stop the applicationof this decree.

A petition has been set up onthe Change.org website and nu-merous allegations have beenmade against the decree to theministry of education, the Om-budsman and the Síndic deGreuges.

Numerous informative andexplanatory documents on thedecree have also been drawn up,accessible from the websitewww.idiomasyeducacion.es sothat anyone can use them, andconferences have been given ex-plaining the decree.

Even protest rallies such asthe one in Alicante on March 10,which had a magnificent turn-out, have been promoted.

To challenge the decree, aprestigious law firm has beencommissioned to draw up an ad-ministrative contentious ap-peal, for which crowdfundinghas been launched. Anyonewishing to participate with asmall contribution should ac-cess the link: https://goo.Gl/w1QggI, where they will find alist of FAQ questions about thischallenge process.

Sant Rafael schoolin La Nucía