Overview of education in Catalonia

Abstract

To understand the actual situation of education in Catalunya it is undoubtely necessary to go into the historical antecedents, where one is aware of the importance of a tradition of preoccupation with education which has served as a base for the revival that has actually occurred. Leading the cooperative revival movements, like the groups of public school teachers in Girona, appear some outstanding people who then have created schools: Ferrer i Guardis, J. Bardina, Rosa Sensat, Martorell, Mira, etc. The three first decades of the century were especially fruitful in this aspect. The civil war ended the revival climax and gave way to a period of darkness and pedagogic regression. In the decade of the seventies two basic institutions appeared which were used to refute pedagogy: Rosa Sensat and Omnium Cultural. Although in both cases there were political plans of apposition to the Franco regime their action was primarily centred in the creation of a permanent school of teacher-training in the first place and the training of teachers of Catalan in the second. Later many other public and private organizations were added to these and other tasks. With the handing over the administrative responsability for the education system to the Generalitat, a policy of efficient organization and the improvement of the quality of education was begun in time for the teaching profession to be thoroughly prepared to fulfill the obligatory duties of the Catalan language. Although the private sector continues being better than the State, a progressive diminution of this is noticable in the Catalan education system as a whole. Statistics show the effect with regard to the keeping up to date of teachers, the number of centres that teach in part or in full in Catalan and the number of studens, differenciated by levels and provinces.