Development & Aid, Education, Europe, Headlines

EDUCATION-SPAIN: Changes in Religious Instruction on Track for Approval

Tito Drago

MADRID, Nov 15 2005 (IPS) - Despite the fierce opposition of Spain’s right-wing Popular Party and the Catholic Church, an educational reform bill that would change religious instruction in the country’s schools is on the road to approval.

“The democratisation of Spain’s educational system is moving ahead, and the most significant aspect will be the changes in terms of religious study and non-discrimination in schools,” lawmaker Victorino Mayoral Cortés of the governing socialist party (PSOE) told IPS.

With the support of Catholic Church leaders, conservative parents associations and the Popular Party (PP) held a march Saturday in Madrid that drew over 1.5 million people according to the organisers and 450,000 according to the socialist government.

Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero offered the PP to reopen talks on the bill, to widen agreement on the reforms.

But opposition leader Mariano Rajoy responded that negotiations would only be possible if the government first withdraws the bill, which it has refused to do.

The educational reform bill, to be debated this week, is slated for passage, because the votes of the PSOE legislators combined with those of the United Left and the Republican Left of Catalonia will give it the necessary majority.

The two aspects of the reform that have caused the greatest friction between progressive and conservative forces are the proposed changes in religious education and measures to guarantee equal access to state-funded private schools.

If the new bill passes into law, religion classes will no longer be factored into a student’s grade point average.

The government had already made religious study classes optional.

With respect to equal access, the bill states that a government-appointed commission would decide on the admission of students to private schools that receive state funding. The aim is to prevent the schools from discriminating on the basis of the socioeconomic level or ethnic background of applicants.

The bill would also allow regional governments to determine whether or not specific educational support is needed for immigrants or for students with special needs in terms of personal or family circumstances, for instance, in public as well as private schools.

With regard to freedom of religion, the U.S. Embassy in Spain notes on its web site that the Spanish constitution states that “‘No faith shall have the character of a state religion.’ However, the government provides certain public financing benefits to the Catholic Church that are not available to other religious entities in practice.”

“The Catholic Church receives financing through voluntary tax contributions and direct payments,” adds the International Religious Freedom Report 2005 released by the U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labour and posted on the embassy web site.

On their income tax forms, taxpayers in Spain can mark a box to contribute 0.5 percent of their taxes to the Catholic Church. If they do not select the box, that proportion goes into a common fund that is distributed among civil society groups.

According to the latest available data, taxpayers in Spain contributed 135 million euros (127.2 million dollars) to the Catholic Church in 2003, while the government provided an additional 28 million euros (33.6 million dollars).

The state not only pays the salaries of religion teachers and military and hospital chaplains, but the Church’s powerful charities, like Caritas and United Hands, receive large subsidies as well.

The right-wing opposition also protests the fact that the new law will prohibit the country’s state-funded private schools, most of which are run by the Church, from charging the students’ families fees for belonging to foundations or associations, as they currently do.

To clarify the government’s intentions, Vice-President María Teresa Fernández de la Vega said Monday that “public contributions will have to be reduced, and the Church will have to meet its goal of becoming self-financing.”

Mayoral Cortés, who defends a secular state, said that parliament and the executive branch should respect the constitution and give equal treatment to all religions.

He also called for fulfillment of an agreement signed with the Catholic Church in 1979, which stipulated that the Church must become self-financing and must stop depending on assistance from the state.

Legislator Gaspar Llamazares, the general coordinator of the United Left – a coalition based on the Communist Party – in the lower house of parliament, demanded Monday that religion be removed entirely from the classroom. But he also said that he would back the new law.

The proponents of the educational reform bill cite a report by the European Commission – the European Union’s executive arm – presented last week in Brussels.

In the report, Spain only ranks above Portugal and Malta with respect to the quality of education in the 25-member European bloc.

According to the study, the proportion of Spaniards between the ages of 20 and 24 who had completed secondary school shrank from 66.2 percent in 1998 to 62.7 percent in 2003 – when the PP was in power – and to 61.8 percent in 2004, the first year of the Zapatero administration.

By contrast, the EU average rose from 76.4 to 76.7 percent between 1998 and 2004.

The proportion of youngsters between the ages of 18 and 24 who had neither completed secondary school nor opted for other avenues of study like vocational/technical education stood at 30.8 percent – double the EU average of 15.7 percent.

Zapatero agreed to meet with the leaders of the protest this week, although a specific date has not yet been set. De la Vega said the government “will listen” to the information that is offered. But she also said the administration would move ahead with the new law.

Spain’s Catholic parents association, CONCAPA, the most powerful of the groups that organised the march, said it would accept the invitation to meet with Zapatero. However, it stressed that it did not want “a cordial but hollow meeting” but one that would lead to modifications of the bill.

CONCAPA complains that the proposed educational reform “ignores the rights and freedoms that the constitution recognises with regard to education, such as the right of parents to decide on the kind of education that they want for their children, the right to free education at the basic and compulsory levels, and the right of private schools to receive public funds.”

Isabel Bazo, the president of the Spanish confederation of private schools (CECE), said “all of the efforts for dialogue with the government have been fruitless and the main reason we are protesting is because the bill does not respect the right of parents to choose their children’s schools, nor the freedom and right to administer and organise educational centres.”