Vox wants to "eliminate activists disguised as teachers" from Education

PalmEducation has once again become a political football between the political groups in the Catalan Parliament. After announcing one inagreement with the PP to eliminate the Catalan requirement In the debate over teacher positions in hard-to-fill posts, Manuela Cañadas (Vox) has once again taken up the issue this Tuesday. She reiterated her objective of "eliminating political activists disguised as teachers" from the education system. Meanwhile, the regional education minister, Antoni Vera, offered statements to downplay the impact this agreement will have. Cañadas accused the left of turning language into "their great ideological fetish" and boasted about the measures she has extracted from the People's Party (PP) to reduce the use of Catalan in various contexts. "Defending linguistic freedom is not attacking any language," she stated: "It is guaranteeing that no teacher or student is discriminated against, and that Spanish occupies the place it rightfully deserves." According to the deputy, when she proposes not requiring teachers to hold a certificate in one of the official languages, what she is defending is "merit" versus "imposition and indoctrination."

For her part, Vera stated that the elimination of the Catalan language requirement in competitive examinations for teaching positions in hard-to-fill areas is a response to a desire to attract professionals to areas where no one else is applying. The majority of these positions (877 this year) are located in Ibiza and Formentera, where housing prices make it difficult to attract qualified candidates. Vera admitted that she has no proof that the Catalan language requirement has prevented teachers from applying for these positions, but said that it is about "opening up another possibility": that "a person from another autonomous community" who wants to start a "life project in the Islands" can do so without having to learn Catalan.

But once they pass the competitive examination, this person will not be able to secure a permanent position at their preferred school. Instead, they could be reassigned year after year until they demonstrate proficiency in Catalan. Vera argued that this system encourages them to eventually pass the exam, even though in the meantime they could be moved between various schools (very difficult to fill in the first year, but perhaps in other places later on) without knowing the Balearic Islands' native language.