The families of the fourth-grade students of CEIP Costa Teguise have submitted a request to the Ministry of Education of the Government of the Canary Islands to reconsider the decision to regroup the students into only four classes next year, when they move on to the fifth grade of Primary School. Currently, the students are distributed in five lines.
According to the parents, the measure has been recently communicated through the School Council and responds to the decrease in enrollment expected for next year. However, they warn that this reorganization will have negative consequences on both the emotional well-being of the children and their academic performance.
“The current course, with less numerous classes, has favored more personalized attention, especially to students with difficulties, which has resulted in an improvement in academic results,” they state in the letter sent to the Ministry.
In addition, they emphasize that the new distribution would mean an increase in students per classroom that would exceed adequate ratios for the size of the facilities, which could compromise the comfort, learning, and safety of the minors. “The modules are small to accommodate more than 22 students per class,” they warn.
The families also emphasize that this new restructuring would break the stability that the students need so much, who have already faced several changes in recent years, such as new teachers or mixtures by linguistic criteria. “The center promised that the groups formed would remain until the sixth grade, and reorganizing them now to change them again next year does not seem the most appropriate,” they point out.
The parents request that the current five classes be maintained in the transition to fifth grade, arguing that any group change should be based on pedagogical criteria and not solely administrative or logistical ones. “We want the case to be evaluated with sensitivity and based on the real needs of the children,” they conclude.
