As work is still continuing on the site that stood abandoned for a number of years, the Department of Education in the Valencia regional government have this week stated that the new IES Playa Flamenca School will be opened this year, after more than a decade of teaching in portacabins.
In April of last year we reported how the government promised to continue with their reduction plan for portacabin use, after a statement was issued explaining that more than 3,000 students across the region are no longer being taught in prefabricated, portable classrooms, and are now educated in purpose built school buildings. The announcement also committed to eliminate 75% of this type of portacabin school by the end of the current administration, or in this, election year.
Torrevieja has already seen the elimination of one of their temporary schools, although the community was far from pleased with having to move the pupils from their immediately local area to an amalgamated school which was reconstructed after being previously closed down.
When the pupils were moved to the C.P. Acequión School, on their first day back in term the mayor of Torrevieja, Eduardo Dolón, boasted about class sizes averaging just 25 students per class, whereas in Orihuela, where the investment had still not been made, some schools had class sizes of 42 pupils per teacher.
On the Orihuela Costa parents and pupils alike have campaigned for years to try to have their voices heard, with the pupils of the IES Playa Flamenca already in their eleventh year of being taught in “temporary” accommodation, having previously also seen class sizes increased, classrooms taken away and even facilities such as dining rooms which were unable to accommodate the children at meal times.
Despite numerous requests for meetings with the education department requested by both the mayor of Orihuela, Monserrate Guillén of the Los Verdes green party, and the councillor for education, Rosa Martínez from the PSOE, information and official commitment from the PP led regional government had never been given, until this latest public announcement this week.
Although the news will be celebrated by those attending the educational system on the Orihuela Costa, it is also seen by many as being too late, as the generation of pupils who suffered at the hands of an inferior and under invested system are now starting to come of age and capable of voicing their dissatisfaction in a very different way, as the young people of today are the voters of tomorrow, many of those who were educated in the portacabins are now eligible to vote and may well choose not to support those who they feel have failed them.
Filed under: http://www.theleader.info/article/46057/
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