Within the framework of a draft Budget of the Canary Islands Community for 2024 that Nueva Canarias-Bloque Canarista (NC-bc) considers imprudent, unbalanced and arbitrary, education comes off very badly. It loses weight in the overall public accounts, growing far below these, much less than half. And, likewise, far from its funding approaching the target of 5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) established by the Canary Islands Law on non-university Education of 2014, it clearly moves away from it. With regard to public university education, the same thing happens, with these Budgets seriously failing with La Laguna and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
Education is essential to achieve better training and, likewise, better employability of our people. The commitment to education and knowledge is one of the fundamental ways to move towards a society with higher quality employment, more cohesive, with young people and adults able to develop professionally in an increasingly competitive market.
It is also essential in the consolidation of democratic values, in a world in which authoritarian proposals are advancing that seek to cut rights and that do not hesitate to resort to violence to try to modify the results of the polls. It is also relevant in the elimination of barriers based on gender and, likewise, in the fight against sexist violence. As well as in promoting environmental awareness on a planet at serious risk from the Climate Crisis that is causing more and more havoc. For this reason, progressive Canarianism understands that it should be a political and social priority.
Advances
Despite the shortcomings that our education system still presents, we have experienced significant advances. This is the case in relation to early school leaving, an international comparison parameter that includes the population between 18 and 24 years of age who have not completed the second stage of Secondary Education (Intermediate Grade Vocational Training, Basic or Baccalaureate) and do not continue any type of training. We closed last year 2022 with 11.7%, two percentage points below the state average (13.9%). It should be remembered that, ten years earlier, in 2012, we were the fourth community with the most dropouts, with 28.30%, 3.4 points above the average, and we became the eighth.
Continuing to advance in education requires clear policies in favor of excellence and equity. Firm commitments to teachers and students. Reduction of ratios, strengthening programs to assist disadvantaged or more vulnerable students, developing the essential modernization of Vocational Training and the renovation and improvement of school infrastructures. And to address these and other tasks, public budgets that prioritize education are essential. And that does not happen in the Canary Islands public accounts for 2024, the draft of which we have just learned about a few days ago.
Indeed, of the 1,121 million euros in which the Budget grows for next year compared to that of 2023, only 69.6 million correspond to education. If the Pact of Progress placed education less than four tenths of 5% of GDP, exceeding 4.6%, now it drops to 4.20%, a distance of eight tenths. In the past legislature and in the midst of various and serious crises, the education budget grew in 2023 by more than 570 million euros compared to that of 2019, an increase of 33%. Recently, a PNL from the PSOE and NC reiterated the need to advance towards 5% of GDP in education. Although it was approved unanimously, the groups that support the Government are moving in the opposite direction.
Priorities
It is possible that the fact that the party that directs education in this Government, the PP, was the only one that then, in 2014, voted in Parliament against the approval of the Canary Islands Education Law may influence these negative circumstances. Also that, on repeated occasions, the Canarian president has disagreed with the economic commitments of the same. The truth is that, for one reason or another, these first budgets of the Government of the two Canarian rights constitute a clear setback for this transcendental and strategic public service. It does not seem that education, its present and future, is among the priorities of the current conservative Executive.
And that happens when the Canarian education system continues to have great challenges to address in the next period. Among them, the extension of early childhood education 0-3 years, essential in the educational aspect for our boys and girls, in overcoming social inequalities, but also relevant in terms of conciliation. This beginning of the course we have already been able to perceive the little interest of the Ministry in its approach from the public system, in what underlies an attempt to favor the private network.
As our parliamentary spokesperson in this area, Carmen Hernández, pointed out in the Canarian Chamber, with these budgets it will not be possible to advance in early childhood education 0-3 years, “it will not be possible to address the improvement of the needs of the education system, nor continue with early schooling and even less improve the staff of teachers. Nor lower the ratios more, reinforce the programs to assist disadvantaged students, develop the modernization of Vocational Training and the renovation and improvement of infrastructures.”
Public universities
The same is true in public university education. Now, with the new Government, it has its own department -Ministry of Universities, Science and Innovation and Culture- which increases the items of our higher centers by only 3.6 million euros. In 2023 compared to 2022 the available resources were almost 30 million, almost ten times more than those of the conservative Government. What has justifiably alarmed the university communities of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and La Laguna, who see the financial stability of their centers in danger, and which has led them to describe the accounts as "disappointing". Pointing out their rectors that they are not enough even to face the salary increase established by the central Government.
Not only is the sustainability of our public universities not guaranteed, but expectations regarding science and research are also frustrated, also neglected in these accounts. In addition, in the same departmental area, culture suffers a very significant reduction, of 10 million euros, just in the opposite line to what is indicated by the law of the Public System of Culture of the Canary Islands approved by Parliament in March and which establishes reaching 2% of the Community Budget in cultural matters in 2030.
Education is, without a doubt, a key factor for the present and for the future of this land. To move towards a more sustainable, egalitarian and balanced society. To have a higher quality job. To be more prepared for the many challenges of a world in permanent transformation. The continuity of the essential financing effort in the educational area is seriously broken in this draft Budget of the Canary Islands Community for 2024 after a legislature of relevant increases in this area. Therefore, with regard to non-university education and, likewise, with regard to the treatment of our public higher centers, the Canarian Budgets for next year deserve a resounding failure. Failure also extensible to science and innovation and culture.
A failure that, together with other serious nonsense, such as the deception in tax matters, the reckless public spending in a context of uncertainty, the arbitrary distribution by departments, the breach of different laws -the Social Services Law, the Education Law and the Culture Law, in addition to the Plan for Science- or the punishment of the productive and social sectors, leads Nueva Canarias-Bloque Canarista to present an amendment to the entirety of these Budgets for 2024.
Román Rodríguez is president of Nueva Canarias-Bloque Canarista (NC-bc).
