Reasons for an educational pact in Spain within the framework of decentralised government administration.

Abstract

Every time a new political party has taken office in Spain in recent decades, it has fully or partially repealed the education law enacted by the previous government and, almost simultaneously, there has been renewed talk of an educational pact. However, unlike legislation, the pact never materialises, leading to disagreements within the political class and great frustration among members of the educational community. Among the difficulties that prevent a pact from being reached, ideological and political reasons have been cited and the model of educational administration has also been blamed, with claims that it interferes negatively and arguments that its decentralised nature prevents unity in the field of education. This article highlights some of its strengths and suggests they might be good advocates for reaching an education pact in Spain. In this respect, each autonomous community must meet certain minimum requirements as an intermediate step towards correcting the overall data. The following reasons for an educational pact are priorities: reducing school dropout rates, improving the number of students in vocational training, improving the figures for education spending, and, with regards to teachers,
strengthening processes for selecting students to train as teachers as well as the social status of this profession. If territorial differences are reduced by improving educational indicators, it seems more likely that a consensus can be reached as a prelude to an education pact.