Almost 800 schools and institutes in the Community of Madrid still do not know if this new school year they will have English assistants in their classrooms. “The Community of Madrid announced its own conversation assistant program to try to resolve the issue of missing the deadline to apply for the central government subsidy. To date, with the new school year started, there is no explanation beyond the headline from the regional administration at the end of last school year,” says María Carmen Morillas, president of Fapa Francisco Giner de los Ríos, with more than 1,000 federated associations.
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“From Fapa we have yet to meet with the Ministry of Education to which we will ask for explanations, among other things, about the Community of Madrid’s own conversation assistant program. Meanwhile, educational centers are left without answers and without the announced conversation assistants,” explains Morillas. Fernando Mardones Morales, president of the other major educational employers’ association, Confapa, shares the same position: “We do not know if the assistants will arrive at the centers.” For now, he says, “there is a lot of uncertainty among school principals because they have hardly any news about what will happen and the school year has already started.”
There used to be about 2,800 assistants each year
The Ministry of Education did not mention the continuation of the language assistant program, especially English, for the current 2026-2027 school year during the academic year presentation. And it has not responded to questions requested by La Vanguardia.
Last school year, Madrid had about 2,800 conversation assistants, mainly in English, French, German, or Italian, supporting 400 schools and nearly 200 institutes.
They accessed educational centers through three channels: the community quota, the Ministry of Education quota, or through the Fulbright program. They worked about 16 hours a week in the centers and earned 1,000 euros.
The ministry led by Mercedes Zarzalejos already informed social agents last June that this program might not be activated. Now, most educational centers do not know if they will have these support conversation teachers.
Application to the Ministry was late
In principle, Madrid has not joined the Ministry of Education’s program, which had been running for about twenty years, so it will have to bring more teachers with its own regional program.
Esteban Álvarez León, a PSOE deputy in the Madrid Assembly specialized in educational matters, explains that “the Ministry of Education has called the state assistant program in a reformulated call together with the Ministry of Labor to resolve the legal-labor conflict that arose in previous years due to the use of this figure in several autonomous communities.”
“Madrid did not join this state call on time. According to the Ministry of Education, communities had until May 22 to communicate their willingness to participate. Madrid did so on June 17, late, and the Ministry rejected its incorporation on June 25 for understanding that it compromised the procedure and the planned deadlines,” explains the opposition deputy of the Madrid Assembly.
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Álvarez highlights: “The central point is another: Madrid cannot claim that the Ministry has left it without 2,700 assistants. The ministry itself stated that Madrid invested 28 million in the program and that, of about 2,800 assistants, only 90 belonged to the Ministry.” In his opinion, “if almost the entire program was funded by the Community of Madrid, the question is why is the whole program now at risk?”
The reason is that there was legal uncertainty and some communities governed by the PP feared that the Ministry of Labor would sanction them because those assistants did not contribute to social security or performed tasks beyond what is established in the regulations.
Until now, Madrid mostly funded its own quota, but it did so under the state umbrella: international call, selection and channeling of candidates, coordination with countries of origin, common rules, appointments, insurance, and shared management. Now, Madrid, being outside that framework, can maintain its own program but must build and justify all the legal, administrative, and labor framework on its own.
For Álvarez, “as of September 11, there is no public call in Madrid with a complete number of places, calendar, recipient centers, economic conditions, health coverage, legal regime, instructions to centers, and guarantees that assistants will not perform teaching tasks.” He continues: “Madrid can pay the assistants, the problem is whether it can maintain the same model while meeting the requirements set by the Ministry of Labor.”
Lengthy procedures to come to Spain
The procedures to attract assistants are not easy because candidates must meet a series of requirements, such as having a university degree, proving they have no criminal record, and no sexual offense convictions. Then, EU citizens must present the European health card and their identity card or passport. Non-EU citizens must present a passport, visa, and health insurance. Accommodation, food, and round-trip transport expenses to their country of origin are at their own expense. Once selected by an external body, the Ministry of Education, Science and Universities transfers their data to the general subdirectorate of bilingualism and assigns them a place in educational centers.
The Ministry of Education led by Zarzalejos must specify the number of assistants it will make available to educational centers; how many will correspond to its own quota, the Fulbright program, or other programs; when they will join; their legal status, as well as the assistants’ health coverage, civil liability, and the guaranteed length of stay.
The unions’ solution is to “hire interim teachers to perform this work, since there is a job pool, although the cost would be higher.” According to Aida San Millán, general secretary of the Federation of Education of CC.OO, “we have to meet with the ministry to clarify this issue and many others because schools and institutes do not know if they will have assistants or not.”
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