A new segregation from school

PalmaThe decision by the Balearic Government to create a Baccalaureate of Excellence for students with the best grades is not a simple commitment to rewarding talent. It is a further step in a very specific direction, that of fragmenting the school, the students and, consequently, future society. Separating students according to their academic performance means assuming that the educational system must classify rather than integrate, and that it must stimulate competition before coexistence.

For decades, public schools have been working in the opposite direction. They do so with difficulties, with contradictions and with insufficient resources, but with the broadly shared underlying idea that inclusive education is an essential tool for social cohesion. That children and adolescents must learn together, with their social, cultural, linguistic and academic differences. That living together also means supporting each other, helping each other and understanding that diversity is part of life. And that equal opportunities consist not in selecting the best, but in ensuring that no one is left behind.

The Baccalaureate of Excellence goes exactly in the opposite direction. What it does is institutionalize a new segregation: segregation by academic results. And this segregation, like all others, will end up having a clear social translation. Students with more family support, more stability and more cultural capital will be the ones who will have more opportunities to end up concentrated in these “excellence” pathways. The others will be left on the other side.

This is not an isolated incident. This new separation comes after other decisions that also erode the model of an inclusive school and society. Linguistic segregation driven by the possibility of choosing the language of early education; the return of single school districts and the point for former students, which further favor social concentration between centers and condemn schools in the most vulnerable neighborhoods to become spaces for those who have no alternatives. Thus, drop by drop, a more unequal, more fragmented, less cohesive educational model is being drawn.

The Government is fully responsible –and aware– of the consequences of this deviation. It will have to be. But it is also worrying that all this is happening without a social response proportional to the seriousness of the changes. The disagreement among teachers is majority, especially in public education, where work has been done for decades for an inclusive school that compensates for inequalities. And yet, the protests from the educational community are scarce and public debate is progressing with a strange resignation. This, when what is at stake is not a simple academic reorganization. It is the model of society that is being built from the classrooms.