Educació triples the budget of the Linguistic Segregation Plan

PalmThe Balearic Islands Ministry of Education has tripled the funding allocated to the schools—all of which are state-subsidized—participating in the pilot program for language segregation in the 2025-2026 academic year. Last year, €1,153,183 was invested to cover six hours of teaching for each primary school class in the 11 participating schools, totaling 534 hours, as specified in a parliamentary response to the PSIB (Socialist Party of the Balearic Islands). This year, more schools have joined, and the program has been expanded to include secondary education, a change that will entail an expenditure of €3,735,019, to be distributed among schools offering both primary and secondary education and those offering only one of the two levels. Seven hours of teaching will be provided for each primary school class, given that the new curriculum includes an additional hour of mathematics (1,071 hours). In the case of Secondary Education, each school will be allocated the hours for the subject of its choice, plus one hour of coordination for each participating group. In total, 591 hours.

Of the 11 schools that implemented the Plan in Primary last year, ten have expanded it to Secondary this year. These are the schools Nuestra Señora de Monti-sion, Can Bonet, Virgen de las Nieves, San Vicente de Paül-Vileta, Santa Mónica, Nuestra Señora de Consolación de Ibiza, Nuestra Señora de Consolación de Alaró, Nuestra Señora de Consolación de Palma, Aixa-Llaüt, and Juan de la Cier. The exception is CC San Alfonso María de Ligorio, which decided to maintain it only in Primary. In June, the Department of Education announced that eight schools had applied to join the Plan for the first time, in Primary, Secondary, or both stages. Candidates had to meet the space and student demand requirements. In Primary, the applicant schools reported by the Department of Education were San Vicente de Paúl and Nuestra Señora de Consolación, both in Palma; Ramon Llull, in Andratx; and Sa Real, in Ibiza. Regarding the Primary and Secondary stages, the candidates were El Templo and San José de la Montaña, both in Palma, and Nuestra Señora de Consolación, in Alcudia. Finally, for Secondary school, there was Jesús María school, also in Palma. All of these schools are state-subsidized private schools.

The center that the Regional Ministry of Education didn't mention in June, but which does appear in the final list of admitted students in July, is CC Balmes. It's worth remembering that the application period ended at the beginning of May; therefore, by June, the Ministry should have already known all the candidate centers, including Balmes.

More students (in record time)

Previously, the provisional list of schools admitted and excluded for the 2025-2026 school year, signed on July 1st, had excluded CC Jesús María due to an "insufficient number of students." However, in just one week—and in the middle of the school holidays—the school reached the minimum required number of students and was finally included in the definitive list, signed and published on July 8th. This latter document lists 19 schools (including Balmes), the same number that the Department of Education had announced in June (excluding Balmes). However, CC San Alfonso María de Ligorio does not appear in the list, although it does appear in the parliamentary response, sent in September, in which the Department lists all the schools participating in the Plan.

The reason is that San Alfonso María de Ligorio had already joined the program last year at the primary level and will continue until the 2026-2027 school year (the Plan, currently in its pilot phase, is valid for three years). Therefore, adding the centers included in this year's final resolution to the one carried over from the previous year, there are 20 centers participating in one or both stages of the Linguistic Segregation Plan, not 19. This includes the 11 from last year and the 9 that have joined this year.

In primary school, the Plan offers families the option of choosing whether Mathematics and Environmental Studies are taught in Catalan or Spanish. As for secondary school (ESO), schools can offer Mathematics and Geography and History in Spanish, as well as one science subject (Biology and Geology, Physics and Chemistry, or Technology). In all cases, according to the Department of Education, at least 50% of class time must be taught in Catalan, as established by the Minimum Requirements Decree. Regarding this decree, although compliance cannot be quantified or proven—because, according to education inspectors, "it's impossible to know what each teacher does in the classroom"—it is well known that numerous schools in the Balearic Islands systematically fail to comply.

The implementation of the pilot program has met with widespread opposition within the Balearic educational community. Teachers, school administrators, and unions have denounced the project as pedagogically unfeasible and claiming it favors the reduction of Catalan as the language of instruction in practice (an argument rejected by the Department of Education). In this vein, hundreds of schools have taken photographs in defense of Catalan-language education, under the slogan "Hands off the language." Furthermore, Catalan language advocacy groups, such as Plataforma per la Llengua and several municipal school boards, have also expressed strong opposition. They believe the program fragments the linguistic model that has functioned for decades and jeopardizes social cohesion, especially in contexts with greater cultural diversity. They also criticize the fact that the burden of the program falls primarily on private schools, the main beneficiaries of the new funding, and warn that this destabilizes the system and weakens the role of Catalan as an integrating force in schools. As the Minister of Education, Antoni Vera, acknowledged in ARA Baleares, "it is the last bastion of Catalan".