He Navarra School Council approved this Tuesday its opinion on the draft provincial order establishing the split school day for all public infant and primary schools. This is a return to the traditional morning and afternoon class model, which in recent years, and especially after the Covidhas lost weight in the majority of Spanish educational centers to the detriment of school day continues intensiveclasses only in the morning.
The regional community thus becomes the first autonomy that in recent years reverses and imposes this schedule by law. All autonomous communities have tended to expand morning hours except Catalonia and the Basque Countrywho have mainly opted for split hours with morning and afternoon classes.
In the Basque Country, a resolution from the Department of Education establishes the day model for each beginning of the school year, which has invariably been divided. In Catalonia, this schedule is also established by system, unless the school council of the center decides it, which generates problems because it is made up mainly of teachers, who prefer morning classes. In any case, public schools in both regions have split hours. The same does not happen in institutes, which have a majority of intensive hours both in these regions and in the rest of Spain.
In recent years, Navarra had carried out a process of analysis and debate in the educational community to see what type of schedule was best. He experimentally implemented the continuous day in schools (with data from February, 70% had implemented this system) and has seen that it has not obtained the expected effects.
The Navarra School Council, after a heated debate over the last few months, has ratified the new order by 14 votes in favor, four votes against from the teaching unions and one abstention. The “vast majority,” in the words of the Department of Education, led by Carlos Gimeno (PSN), is made up of the federations of fathers and mothers and other members of the Council plenary.