10-year concerts and public-funded severance pay: the Government's new turn towards private schools

PalmaGuaranteed contracts for ten years, more stability, the possibility of allocating everyone's resources to improving buildings, and the Administration assuming part of the severance payments for teaching staff. These are some of the main novelties in the draft of the new educational contracts decree being processed by the Ministry of Education, which ARA Balears has accessed, and which consolidates the Government's shift towards subsidized education. An analysis document from the PSIB maintains that a good part of these changes strengthen the position of subsidized education within the educational system and raises doubts about the fit of some measures with LOMLOE, the Organic Law on the Right to Education (LODE), and the Balearic Islands Education Law (LEIB).

From six to ten years

The most significant modification is the extension of the duration of educational agreements. Article 4 stipulates that agreements for the second cycle of Early Childhood Education, Primary, Secondary Education (ESO), Baccalaureate, Vocational Training, and Special Education will have a validity of ten years, four more than the six provided for in the current decree. This is one of the main objectives of the subsidized school sector, which has been demanding more stability for years.

The PSIB document, on the other hand, maintains that a ten-year agreement reduces the Administration's capacity to adapt the educational network to demographic changes. According to this document, once units are contracted for a decade, it will be more difficult to reorganize public offerings if the birth rate falls, if schooling needs change, or if Education decides to strengthen the public network in a particular municipality. The authors consider that this forecast could conflict with the principle of educational planning included in both LOMLOE and LEIB.

More stability for the subsidized sector

The draft also reinforces several rights of the owners of the subsidized centers. Among others, it regulates the right to participate in admission processes on equal terms with public centers, to request modifications to the agreement, and to request its renewal when the validity period ends. The decree does not establish that this renewal is automatic, but it does systematize these rights within the new regulation. For the socialists, this set of measures consolidates the continuity of the subsidized centers within the network supported by public funds and reinforces their structural weight within the system. They also regret that the text does not expressly recall the complementary nature that legislation attributes to subsidized education with respect to the public network.

Another of the most controversial issues is the regulation of schooling needs. The decree allows the Ministry to authorize new subsidized units (classrooms) when there is a demand that cannot be met with the available places. Although the text does not explicitly give preference to subsidized schools over the construction of new public centers, the PSIB interprets that it favors the expansion of subsidies to respond to the increase in demand, instead of prioritizing the growth of the public network, as established by the LEIB.

This interpretation is also part of the political line that the Government has defended since the beginning of the legislature. In various interventions in Parliament, the Minister of Education, Antoni Vera, set the Executive's position: "We will not build public places where there are subsidized ones", he said, in a statement that generated strong opposition among unions and entities in defense of public schools.

This positioning has also been reflected in other decisions adopted during the legislature, such as the massive contracting of places for the first cycle of Early Childhood Education (0-3 years). Furthermore, the first two full academic years of the PP Government (2024-2025 and 2025-2026) have coincided with a uneven evolution of enrollment: while the public network has lost students (and not a few), the subsidized network has gained them. Without the decree explicitly stating it, this context helps to understand why the defenders of the public system interpret the reform as another step within a strategy aimed at consolidating the weight of the subsidized system.

Public resources for private buildings

If the extension of concerts to ten years is the main change of the decree, the new economic regime concentrates the most controversial measures. The text allows for the allocation of remainders from modules for other expenses and complementary staff to the maintenance and improvement of the centers. The allegations warn that this could revalue private property with public resources and favor forms of indirect profit incompatible with free education. Another of the main novelties is that, in certain cases, Education will assume the cost of compensation derived from dismissals or other contractual terminations of teaching staff.

For socialists, this is one of the most important concessions of the decree. They maintain that state regulations finance the salaries and operating expenses of the centers, but not dismissal compensation. For this reason, they qualify the measure as "socialization of business risks," since it is the center's owner who dismisses the teacher, but it is the Government that assumes the cost. They also reject that compensation is financed when it is the same worker who terminates the contract due to a substantial modification of their working conditions.

The decree also introduces modifications in the regulation of teaching staff. Among other aspects, it allows, exceptionally, subsidized centers to provisionally hire teachers who do not yet meet all the required academic requirements, provided that they prove that it is not possible to fill the position with a teacher who does meet them.

The socialist allegations consider that this flexibility could conflict with state regulations on teacher qualifications and generate differential treatment compared to public centers. They also question the exceptions provided for early childhood education technicians and the deadlines for proving certain linguistic requirements, because they understand that they lower the requirements applicable to publicly funded centers.

Beyond technical aspects

Beyond concrete changes, the new decree reflects the PP government's vision of the educational system: a subsidized school with rights increasingly comparable to those of public schools. In rights, the gap has narrowed enough (more resources, salary increases, declarations of autonomous interest for improvements in subsidized centers, etc.). In duties, however, the inequality is quite evident. Examples include the fees that many subsidized schools charge as if they were mandatory, with prices unaffordable for many families, and the obligation to purchase textbooks and uniforms through the same center, a practice that current regulations prohibit. The difference in duties is also evident in the distribution of newly arrived and foreign students, who traditionally end up mostly in public schools.newly arrived and foreign students, who traditionally end up mostly in public schools.

The future decree on agreements consolidates this model and gives continuity to the educational policy deployed by the Government during the legislature. More than a simple normative change, it confirms a commitment to strengthening the role of state-subsidized schools within the educational system. The debate, in essence, is about the model: to what extent should public resources continue to strengthen a private network that, despite being funded with public money, does not assume the same obligations as the public one.