Back to School for 11,000 Pupils

A total of 11,227 students continued their educational journey in Torrevieja this week, enrolled in the 2018/2019 academic year calendar.

Councillor for Education, José Hurtado, who was joined by the representative of the School Councils, Carmen Sempere, provided data on the enrolment, whilst also emphasising that classes have begun with “total normality.”

In the 12 infant and primary schools, 1,842 students aged between 2 and 5, which is 15 more than last year, joined the school ranks. There was an increase of 72 pupils in the primary school group, now with 4,615 students.

Some leaving it to the last minute, Hurtado explained that there had been about 190 requests for late registration but that “practically all of them have already been assigned a school. The figure is very similar to the one that occurred last year, with 186 requests”.

As for high school students, there are 879 in the Baccalaureate -719 in the daytime and 160 in the night-; 155 in Basic Vocational Training; 469 in Professional Training of Medium Degree; and 282 in Professional Training of Higher Degree. The total number of students who have started in Secondary Education amounts to 4,770.

Hurtado also reported that, in the case of secondary education, “the number of applications that have been submitted after the deadline is 110”, and all are already assigned a centre. For this reason the councillor said that “in mid-October we will be able to provide more specific and comparative data with more accuracy.”

Hurtado highlighted that the current ratio of 25 students per classroom in Infant and Primary is being progressed, a figure that was implemented by the Ministry of Education last year “because when the crisis occurred and rationalisation measures were established, there was so much damage to the municipalities in many services and especially education, one of the rationalisation measures was to increase the ratio to reduce the teaching staff, among other things, and what has been done now is to establish the ratio in 25 in these levels of Infant and Primary. ”

Hurtado said that in the infants group, there is even a reduction on the ration, with 23 being the established norm by the current Torrevieja council “if there is a child with special needs in a classroom”.

In Primary Education the ration has not yet been fully achieved, “but progress has been made with respect to the previous year as there is no classroom that exceeds 30 students.”