The 5% for Education Platform has denounced in a press release "the serious contrast" between the 527 million euros of surplus in the 2024 budget and an insufficient teaching staff. To which has added the dismissal of 567 temporary workers from the Canarian education system as a consequence of the misnamed "stabilization plan".
"While good economic management is presumed, thousands of students see reduced human resources in their classrooms, also failing to comply with the legal obligation to place educational investment at 5% of the Gross Domestic Product, as established by the Canary Islands Education Law.
In the last year, the teaching staff in the Canary Islands barely grew by 0.6%, "a rate well below the state average (1.1%) and communities such as Extremadura (3.2%)". This evolution places us at the bottom of the growth of staff and is devaluing the quality of public education.
As we have been insisting with verifiable data, the Canary Islands has improved many aspects of its education in the last two decades, but this improvement is still much slower than that of the rest of the communities and in some indicators - per capita investment in education, schooling 0-3 years or increase in teaching staff-, "we have been placed at the bottom of the State despite having a law approved since 2014 that required progressive increases in investment", he added.
"The most serious thing is that this situation does not respond to a lack of resources," said the Platform. "It would have been enough to add 454 million euros more to the Education budget for 2024 to have reached 5% of GDP in educational investment," he continued. "The Government of the Canary Islands refused to do so alleging lack of funds, and now it is found that 527 million euros have been left over, an amount greater than necessary," he stressed. With two budget years, 2024 and 2025, in which the autonomous community moved away from the objective established in the Law.
For all these reasons, the 5% for Education Platform has demanded "an increase of 250 million in the 2026 budgets, destined as a priority to:
- the incorporation of 700 teachers next year to bring the teaching staff closer to the best-endowed communities, reverse the dismissals of the Canarian temporary teachers and promote care programs to diversity.
- accelerate the implementation of schooling of early childhood education 0-3 years from a public offer.
- place ourselves on the path to comply with the Canary Islands Education Law until reaching 5% of GDP for education.
Finally, he indicated that education "cannot continue to be the bargaining chip of austerity. The money was there: what has been lacking is the political will to invest it in what really matters".
