Spain EDUCATION
Figure 9. Spain's Education System in the 1980s
In the 1980s, Spain spent about 8 percent of its
national
budget on education. In 1983 education expenditures
amounted to
only about US$120 per capita, which placed Spain
forty-fifth in
the world in per capita spending on education, far behind
most
other countries in Western Europe. In the government's
1988
budget, expenditures on education were scheduled to
increase by
18 to 20 percent over 1987, to about US$170 per person.
Nevertheless, rapid increases in other areas meant that
spending
on education declined as a proportion of the total budget,
to
about 6.7 percent. This level of expenditure was not only
too
little in an advanced industrial society, but it was also
distributed in a way that was skewed toward the expensive
private-sector schools.
In the 1970s, the Ministry of Education and Science
began to
confront the paradox that, although the General Law on
Education
(Ley General de Educacion--LGE) made primary education
free and
obligatory, the reality was that the state could not build
schools or hire teachers fast enough to keep up with the
demand.
The consequence was a widening gap between the rising
student
population and the number of places available for them.
The
solution lay in the short run in state subsidies to
private
schools that enabled them to offer basic primary education
free
or for a reduced fee. Thus, although the government could
claim
that by 1977 there were enough places in school to go
around, in
some major cities, such as Madrid, more than half were
provided
by private schools.
By the early 1980s, about 40 percent of all schools
were
private. Of these, just over half were run by the Roman
Catholic
Church and enrolled some 1.2 million pupils in primary
schools
and 230,000 in secondary schools. The remainder of the
private
schools were operated as profit-making enterprises by
secular
owners. The religious schools often were highly regarded,
and the
instruction they offered probably was superior to that
provided
by the state-run institutions. The other private sector
schools
varied greatly in quality. Although a few were excellent,
many
others were seriously underfunded and poorly staffed, so
that
private secular education was not automatically associated
with
elite education as was the case in some other West
European
countries.
Between 1977 and 1982, the government's annual subsidy
to
private education nearly tripled. As a result, by the time
the
center-right coalition UCD government left office in late
1982,
most primary schools were free. Unfortunately, this policy
had to
be paid for by drawing on funds available for state
schools, with
a consequent loss of teachers and instructional quality in
the
public system.
The Socialist government that came to power in 1982
sought to
soften the conflict between private (largely Catholic)
schools
and public schools by integrating the private schools into
the
country's overall education system. To accomplish this
goal, in
1984 the government passed the Organic Law on the Right to
Education (Ley Organica del Derecho a la Educacion--LODE),
which
established three categories of schools. Free public
schools were
accountable to either the Ministry of Education and
Science or to
the governments of the autonomous communities. Instruction
was
subject to the principles of the Constitution, in that it
had to
be ideologically neutral and it had to respect diverse
religious
beliefs. The second category, private schools, usually
secular,
could be organized by any person or group as long as
constitutional limits were observed. These schools were to
receive no state assistance so that all costs were borne
by the
students' families. The third category, mixed schools,
usually
religious, were financed by the state. Nevertheless, the
director
and the faculty were chosen by a school council, or
consejo
escolar (pl., consejos escolares), made up of
representatives of the school's diverse constituencies,
including
parents and faculty. Although the state did not try to
control
this subsidized sector, the consejos were a clear
signal
that it intended increased democratization in this all
important
realm of society. In all three models, students enjoyed
the right
not to receive instruction that violated their religious
beliefs.
As a result of these educational reforms, during the
two
decades after 1965 Spain had made great strides, enrolling
essentially the entire population in the age group of the
primary
grades and reducing the country's illiteracy to a nominal
3 to 6
percent. The really impressive gains, however, were in the
secondary grades and in higher education, especially for
women.
In 1965 only 38 percent of Spain's youth were enrolled in
secondary schools, one of the lowest percentages in
Western
Europe and only about 60 percent of the average of all
advanced
industrial countries. Only 29 percent of the country's
females,
less than half the industrial countries' average, were
enrolled
in the secondary grades. By 1985, an estimated 89 percent
of all
students and 91 percent of females were attending
secondary
schools. These figures conformed to the average of the
industrial
democracies, and were noticeably higher than those in
Italy,
Britain, or Sweden. At the university level, enrollment
more than
quadrupled in percentage terms, from 6 percent in 1965 to
26
percent in 1985, a level about 30 percent lower than the
industrial countries' average, but still higher than that
of
Britain or Switzerland. In 1980 women constituted 40
percent of
university enrollment (48 percent in 1984), a level only
four to
six percentage points behind France, Belgium, and Italy.
Nevertheless, in terms of the school-age population per
teacher, Spain still ranked forty-seventh in the world,
and in
terms of the percentage of school-age population in
school, it
ranked twenty-second. In this area, demographics were
working in
favor of Spain's educational planners, however. Spain's
"baby
boom" lasted about a decade longer--until the
mid-1970s--than
similar phenomena did in the rest of Europe, but after
1977 the
birth rate fell at a faster rate than it did in any other
country
in Western Europe. As a result, planners expected that the
school
population pressures of the 1960s and the 1970s would soon
abate,
giving the country's educational system some much-needed
breathing space.
The minister of education and science through most of
the
1980s, Jose Maria Maravall Herrero, has written that the
country's educational system must fulfill four important
functions: to promote the cohesion of the nation (i.e.,
cultural
integration); to contribute to the integration of society
(i.e.,
social integration); to foster equality of opportunity
(i.e.,
economic integration); and to socialize citizens to hold
democratic values (i.e., political integration). Spanish
political elites recognized that, despite the remarkable
political and economic transformation of their country,
they were
still presiding over a society split by cultural, social,
economic, and political differences that had endured for
generations. The country's educational system did little
to
overcome these divisions until the restoration of
democracy;
since then, education has become one of the principal
instruments
in national integration.
Data as of December 1988
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