The CEU Beato Luis Belda has begun its first academic year in Palma with nearly 200 students, 97% of whom are from the Balearic Islands. The new university center offers four degrees (Medicine, Nursing, Physiotherapy, and Psychology) and plans to incorporate Pharmacy, Dentistry, and Physical Activity and Sports Sciences (CAFE) in the 2027-2028 academic year. Later on, it aspires to promote a bio-health campus in collaboration with healthcare institutions. The inauguration brought together representatives from the Government, the Council of Mallorca, the healthcare sector, and the UIB. Attendees included, among others, the Minister of Education and Universities, Antoni Vera; the Minister of Health, Manuela García; the Minister of Finance and Public Service of the Council of Mallorca, Rafel Bosch; and the Director General of IB-Salut, Javier Ureña. The president of the College of Physicians, Carles Recasens, delivered the inaugural lecture.

"Yesterday evening they notified us and we had to reorganize everything in a matter of minutes". Marta Torres, mother of two children aged 4 and 8 and a resident of Vila, started this Monday with an added headache: combining work with childcare after the suspension of classes in the Pityusic Islands due to storm Adam. Like her, many families have had to improvise alternatives to face a day without school. The decision to suspend school activity in Mallorca, Ibiza, and Formentera to prevent risks from intense rainfall has forced parents to seek solutions overnight, between schedule changes, teleworking, and family help. In many cases, the notice arrived when families already had their work week organized and did not have much room to modify their plans.

Jaume Carot (Tortosa, 1960) has been the rector of the UIB since 2021. At a time when the arrival of new private universities threatens to gain ground on the public offering, Carot must face the challenge of securing the necessary resources to consolidate research and expand studies. Catalan in the classrooms and the need to bring the university closer to society are other pending subjects. The threat of the commodification of higher education is real.

The Es Liceu teaching cooperative, the Association of Families of Students (AFA), and the neighbors have filed a joint complaint regarding the repeated burning of tires, plastics, and other materials on a property adjacent to the educational center in Palma. The educational community is warning of the risk that the fumes may pose to the health of the children and the center's staff, and asserts that they have been reporting the incidents for over two years without the situation being resolved.

The Contentious-Administrative Court number 1 of Palma has admitted for processing the class action lawsuit by the STEI against the Government to claim the full payment of the extraordinary bonuses for teachers in the Balearic Islands. The union requests that the specific regional supplement and the professional career supplement be included.

The Balearic Islands are experiencing a paradoxical situation regarding the education and employment of young people. On one hand, 15% drop out of their studies prematurely; on the other, almost half of those who work (48.9%) are overqualified for the job they do, according to the Emancipation Observatory for the second semester of 2025. The data points to two difficulties: there are young people who stop their education early and others who, despite continuing to study, do not find a job suitable for their qualifications, a fact that generates frustration. These are different realities that, together, show the difficulties youth face in completing their education and finding a job that matches the studies they have undertaken.

The Supreme Court has annulled the state decree that last year reinforced the conditions that universities must meet to be created and maintain recognition. The ruling comes following the appeal filed by the Government against this regulation and renders ineffective the tightening of requirements approved by the state Executive in October 2025. The Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Supreme Court reached the decision unanimously, but not because it considers the requirements incorporated by the decree to be illegal or inappropriate. The court focuses its decision on the way the regulation was processed: it concludes that the Spanish government did not sufficiently justify that it was necessary to resort to the urgent procedure and that this allowed for the omission of the prior consultation process.

The family federations of Ibiza, Menorca, and Mallorca have demanded more resources from the Minister of Education and Universities, Antoni Vera, to guarantee educational inclusion and equity, in addition to progress in complementary services, the climate control of centers, and the real free nature of education. The entities, grouped in the COAPA Balears Confederation, have met with Vera and the Director General of Early Childhood, Innovation, and Educational Community, Neus Riera, to convey their proposals to them.

The housing crisis is now also affecting the Balearic Islands' ability to retain students who want to study Medicine there. The dean of the UIB Faculty of Medicine, Antoni Bennàsar, explained that two people have resigned this year from the place they had secured to begin their degree for a non-academic reason: "They didn't find housing and have gone elsewhere," he said. Bennàsar made this statement during the review of the 2026 MIR results and the ten years of the UIB Faculty of Medicine, at the Son Espases University Hospital. The dean explained that there have been several resignations from places, although in some cases the reason is simply that the students have secured a vacancy in their home community.

43.6% (24) of the 55 students from the UIB Faculty of Medicine who took the 2026 MIR exam placed within the top tier of the ranking, among the 27% with the best results out of the nearly 15,000 candidates who took the test, with seven graduates (12%) in the top 10%. The faculty highlighted these figures this Wednesday, coinciding with the tenth anniversary of Medicine studies at UIB. The dean, Antoni Bennàsar, remarked that results have improved progressively in recent graduating classes. The percentage of students placed in this top tier was 30% in the first class, rose to 40% subsequently, and last year it stood at 41.6%. "The level of the students is good," he defended.

The UOB union denounces that the Department of Education has modified the end-of-year calendar for the second year of Baccalaureate with the school year already underway and has brought forward the deadline for publishing grades. According to the union in a statement, the start-of-year instructions published last June established that the records for the ordinary evaluation of the second year of Baccalaureate could be closed, at the latest, until May 21, 2027, at 3:00 p.m. Now, however, the Department has set May 13, 2027, as the deadline for the publication of grades.

The SIAU union denounces that the union elections for non-university teaching staff in the Balearic Islands have begun with “less transparency and guarantees” than four years ago. Today, the coordinating electoral boards for each island have been formally constituted, which marks the start of the electoral process, culminating in the vote on December 2nd. The electoral campaign will take place from November 16th to 30th.

Teachers in the Balearic Islands will head to the polls on December 2nd to elect their union representatives. The elections come at a particularly relevant time for the future of the education system, because the representatives who emerge from this process will be in charge of negotiating and implementing the new 2027-2031 educational framework agreement with the Ministry of Education and, subsequently, monitoring it and overseeing its application over the coming years. The electoral calendar is already set. The censuses will be published on October 22nd at 10:00 AM and teachers will have until October 27th at 10:00 AM to submit claims. The final census will be published on October 29th at 12:00 PM.

About a hundred 0-3 educators protested this Tuesday in front of the Parliament during the strike day called in the sector, which, according to the follow-up data provided at 11:00 AM —with 74% of centers reporting—, has a 21% turnout across the Balearic Islands. By island, the impact is 20.39% in Mallorca, 41.99% in Menorca, 9.95% in Ibiza, and 6.45% in Formentera. For their part, the unions report a higher impact of the strike: 60% in Mallorca, 80% in Menorca, 40% in Ibiza, and 60% in Formentera. The workers gathered in front of the Chamber while the plenary session was being held to demand improvements in their working conditions and in the care of children. The demonstrators displayed signs with messages such as '0-3 is for educating, not babysitting', 'Our agreement, our future', 'Canteen regulations', and 'Childhood cannot be cared for in a rush', among others.

The UIB student residence is increasingly overwhelmed. “There are more than 300 people on the waiting list. The pressure is getting worse every time. Housing is very complicated,” admits the Vice-Rector for Innovation and Digital Transformation at the UIB, Loren Carrasco. The residence has 101 places and practically all of them are occupied each academic year by students who already live there. This year, 85 students have renewed their place. The pressure on the facility has intensified in recent years: in the 2022-23 academic year there were 185 students on the waiting list, a figure that increased to 215 at the beginning of the 2024-25 academic year and now exceeds 300 people.

At IES Son Cladera, the canteen started operating after the pandemic. The school had detected an increase in nutritional needs among families and requested to be able to launch the service. Now, about ten students stay for lunch every day. For some families, the director explains, the canteen is a support in the face of a complicated economic situation, but the price can also be an impediment. "It is hard for them to buy a prepared meal, but it is even harder to have to pay eight euros for the canteen," points out Manu Blanco.

STEI demands the resignation of the Director General of Early Childhood, Neus Riera, due to the management of the 49 new Early Childhood Education Technician (TEI) positions created for the 2026-2027 academic year. The union considers that the Ministry of Education has managed these positions in a “disastrous” manner and denounces that the professionals have not been appointed to vacancies for the entire school year. According to STEI, this week Riera was scheduled to appear before the Sectoral Board of General Services, at the union's request, to provide explanations regarding the situation. Specifically, she was to explain why the 49 new TEI positions have not been filled with vacancy appointments. Ultimately, according to the union, the Director General did not appear and submitted a written statement with her explanations.

The decline of the Balearic Islands in Reading comprehension in the PISA tests has opened the debate on the causes of the setback and on what measures the education system should adopt to reverse it. The Minister of Education, Antoni Vera, has pointed to screens as one of the elements that may explain the situation and advocates for recovering certain reading habits in the classrooms. "Screens do not help," Vera stated when analyzing the results of the Balearic Islands. The minister argues that "languages cannot be learned with screens: paper and pen are needed" and that reading books must regain more prominence in the classrooms.

The fall of Can Arabí has reshuffled the map of school canteens in the Balearic Islands. The company that managed 44 of them last academic year and led the ranking of centers has disappeared from the new list of the Department of Education and its business has been distributed among several companies. But the change has not meant an atomization of the service. On the contrary: a significant part of the canteens that have become available has gone to operators that already managed dozens of centers, reinforcing the weight of the large operators.

Students in the sixth year of Infant Education, sixth year of Primary Education, and fourth year of ESO in the Balearic Islands will receive specific training this academic year on how to act in emergency situations. The Government will roll out the Education X Emergencies program to all educational centers supported by public funds, with a forecast of reaching 36,244 students and providing a total of 3,624 hours of training during the 2026-2027 academic year. The Minister of Education and Universities, Antoni Vera, and the Second Vice President and Minister of Presidency, Coordination of Government Action and Local Cooperation, Antònia Maria Estarellas, presented the initiative this Monday at the IES Emili Darder in Palma. The program is a joint effort between the Directorate General for Emergencies and Interior and the Ministry of Education and Universities.