Education Proposes Exempting Tribunal Members from Teaching Duties During Examination Periods

The Department of Education is preparing changes to the configuration system of examination tribunals for teachers. This was announced by the Councillor for Education, José Antonio Rovira, during a forum on Education and Culture organised by TodoAlicante. The announcement came just two days after the Department and the unions reached an agreement to call off a planned strike for this Saturday, which threatened the exams for over 18,000 candidates aiming to secure positions as secondary school teachers.

The situation was resolved after the regional body committed to paying attendance bonuses to tribunal members without requiring them to prove they had acted in evening sessions. The changes now being considered by the Department aim to prevent such conflicts.

According to Rovira, it is proposed that the five members of each tribunal be replaced in their schools by interim teachers, allowing them to focus exclusively on the examination process from March to June and from September to December. "We believe this model will provide objective benefits because the selection process will not be subject to the time pressures it currently faces," stated the councillor.

The change, which is being negotiated with the unions, also aims to avoid as much as possible the overlap between the end of the academic year and the holding of exams, hence the proposal to advance them to March or delay them to September.

Regarding the threat of a strike planned for this Saturday, the councillor accused the convening unions of wanting to "radicalise and scare with this issue," emphasising that the Department "was not going to endanger" the development of the exams.

Among other issues, Rovira took the opportunity at the TodoAlicante forum to review the figures of the Pla Edificant in the province of Alicante. According to these data, there are currently 246 delegated actions in 78 municipalities, with nearly 200 million already certified as part of a total investment of 532 million.

He also spoke about the new decree to curb assaults on teachers, which will provide these professionals with greater legal and psychological support. "Assaults are intolerable. We will put all means at the service of this cause," stated the councillor, acknowledging an increase in classroom conflict since the COVID-19 pandemic. This regulation will also allow for more detailed restrictions on mobile phone use in educational settings.

Regarding the changes that the Educational Freedom Law will bring, he recalled that Education will provide all schools with a guiding model of vehicular language programmes to reflect the results of the consultation in which families participated. These models propose that the Mathematics subject be taught always in Spanish, and the Knowledge of the Environment subject in Valencian.

He also recalled the management of the previous regional government team, referring to the denunciation of a business network to defraud more than a million euros in public subsidies for employment promotion. In this regard, he noted that the Department has increased the requirements to access subsidies and established more controls to prevent fraud, such as investigating links between companies or requiring that they did not have permanent contracts in the last three months.

In university matters, he emphasised the benefits of the centralised waiting list system for university admission, which will come into effect this academic year, and criticised the university decree announced by the Government, as it "takes away powers from the autonomous communities and will end the specialisation of private universities." By this, he referred to the requirement for newly created private institutions to offer degrees in at least three of the five areas of knowledge.