The Socialist Party of Lanzarote believes that the Ministry of Education of the Government of the Canary Islands, presided over by Coalición Canaria, is "directly responsible for the loss of class hours in public education", given the changes made in recent years in relation to the traveling teachers, who covered short-term replacements.
The socialists denounce that "there is currently no type of substitution for absences of less than 15 days", something that, according to them, did not happen a couple of school years ago, since the absences of teachers for short periods of time "were covered by other teachers, traveling teachers, whose job was to cover these small substitutions of up to 15 days", the socialists assure that "in Lanzarote there were 70 traveling teachers".
Currently, only teacher absences longer than 15 days are replaced, being regional and even national replacements, so the substitute must be requested from Las Palmas. This means that sometimes, the teacher lives in Lanzarote and cannot be notified directly but must be processed via Las Palmas, which causes a loss of time that students suffer in their classrooms.
Therefore, the PSC-PSOE has proposed in the Canary Islands Parliament a "short-term substitution system centralized in each Island", which includes a sufficient number of traveling teachers to cover short-term absences and if the absences are long, they take care of the students until the substitute arrives". With this system, practically no class hours would be lost.
They also assure that "Coalición Canaria first removed almost all the traveling teachers, and then refused to implement this system or another similar one".
In addition, regarding the investment in education, the socialists consider that "it is far from being the necessary one", since, according to them, "while the European Community recommends dedicating 6% of the Gross Domestic Product to education, the Canary Islands barely exceeds 4% (4.2%), being at the bottom of Europe."
