Salvador Illa is approaching the midpoint of his term in the Generalitat and if there is one thing that has characterized his discourse, it is prioritizing the management of the Government above any other identity consideration. Catalonia needs to improve in many aspects and there is a long list of pending issues that are on everyone’s mind: housing, transportation, infrastructure, healthcare, social services, and education, among others. What is asked of Illa is not to perform miracles and solve all these issues in a snap, but to lay the foundations for the necessary reforms and change the trend of recent years, where the focus of the Generalitat governments was more on achieving independence than on resolving the day-to-day of the autonomy.
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There have been advances in some aspects that were stalled, such as the expansion of El Prat airport or the B-40, the hospital projects of Clínic or Josep Trueta, and it is also necessary to positively value the increase in the Mossos d’Esquadra staff to up to 25,000 agents or the addition of 200 courts. The list can be made longer, without overlooking that one of the great achievements will be if the improvement of the financing system is confirmed.
But what is not acceptable is that some things go backwards. And in the field of education, it does not seem that the path taken is being a success. Exactly one year ago, the process of awarding teaching positions had to be suspended due to various irregularities. Now, after a school year marked by teachers’ strikes in a conflict that is still unresolved, the fiasco of the PISA report should set off all alarms. After the poor results obtained by Catalonia in 2022, controls should have been tightened to improve them. And what has happened is that students have been excluded so that the result would not be even worse. The OECD reported yesterday that the limit for the percentage of excluded students was 5% and that it is rare for it to reach 10%. In the case of Catalonia, it reached 23%. And the worst part was that the case was known a long time ago, but it has not been disclosed until now.
Catalonia cannot fail any more in education. And President Illa must be consistent with his discourse of advancing the country and not making it regress.
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