The Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) recognized a decision on the right of a student from the Turó del Drac school in Canet de Mar (Maresme) to receive a main subject in Spanish other than Spanish language. The magistrates consider that legislation and jurisprudence require that Spanish be used as a vehicle for at least one main subject and they want to guarantee it even in this case.
The family asking for Spanish classes in Canet: “We have to be brave and claim our rights”
Therefore, it partially upholds the appeal of the parents of the girl, who is in Primary School, against the decision of the Department of Education that opposed the lawsuit. On the other hand, the court dismissed the remaining appeal and continued the center’s linguistic project. The sentence can be appealed before the TSJC itself.
In the known legal arguments to defend that Spanish should be used as a vehicle, on this occasion the court added another reason, in its opinion: it thought that although the goal of compulsory education for those student to master two languages together, it will not forget the families that pass through Catalonia. For this reason, the court considered that the immersion system should be legal only in two systems of centers or classrooms separated by languages.
In this way, it rules that while the student in question is in the Catalan education system, he must receive “effectively in Spanish, outside the field of knowledge, key competence, subject or subject equivalent to learning this language , one or several areas of knowledge, key skills, subjects or additional subjects that, due to their importance to the entire curriculum or their teaching load, can be considered primary.”
The girl’s parents intend for their daughter to be educated at least 25% of the time in Spanish or Catalan throughout her pre-university education, in line with previous rulings. They also want the entire linguistic project of the center, which was approved in 2018-2019, to be deleted, because the two languages are not considered the same vehicle. Finally, I would like all signage and communication in the center to be in two languages.
In October 2021, the TSJC issued a precautionary measure in which women must receive at least 25% of Spanish classes. The Generalitat opposed and during that time approved a reform of the education law and a decree law to guarantee the primacy of Catalan as a vehicular language in schools, explaining that the pedagogical criteria are not compatible with those percentage of each of the languages. to use. For its part, the TSJC raised the question of unconstitutionality in response to the Constitutional Court (TC), which has not yet been resolved.
Meanwhile, in the case of Canet the court considered that it was an individual issue and, therefore, the decision of the TC on the whole regulation could not be expected.
For this reason, the court asked the director of Turó del Drac to send it the linguistic project for the academic year 2022-2023 detailing the weekly hours of each language, the norms of using one language or another and the support measures for the course. recently enrolled Spanish-speaking students.
The director replied that the subjects are not taught entirely in one language, because the sociolinguistic diversity of the students “conditions” what happens in the classrooms. The director said that it is impossible to use only one language in the classrooms and it is not possible to determine how many hours each language is used. In addition, he recalled that the educational model was based on fewer and fewer schedules for the subjects and that the educational materials were in different languages. Regarding the support for students who do not understand Catalan, he argues that there is a supportive classroom and that teachers adapt to the reality of each student.
In the same answer, the director admitted that in the last three years the number of students who have Catalan as their mother tongue has increased from 60 to 45%, although some have Catalan and Spanish at home, and this can be considered of which 57% have Catalan as their mother tongue. . Spanish remains the mother tongue in 30% of cases. Other languages range from 6 to 11%: 5% speak Arabic at home and the remaining 6% speak other languages.
In its 19-page ruling, the fifth section of the controversy-administrative chamber of the TSJC recalled that the TC ruling on the 2010 Statute configured a system of “linguistic conjunction,” which, despite proposing a “pattern of balance and equality between languages. “, does not prevent Catalan from being the center of gravity of the educational model and has more weight than Spanish, but it requires that Spanish has a greater presence than the strict subject of the Spanish language and literature. Therefore, it considers that the Constitution and the various educational laws do not admit the right to receive compulsory education in an official language. It requires the teaching of at least one main non-linguistic subject in Spanish, according to the TC and the TSJC.
