The educational centers in the south of Tenerife They are at the limit of their capacity. He spectacular population growth in recent years due to the tourist pull, together with the late response to build infrastructures, the ratios in the classrooms of the region have skyrocketedtoday the highest in the province.
“The centers in the South are at their maximum capacity, with ratios above those that can be supported, which leads to the occupation of common spaces such as laboratories and rooms for drawing or music. The few sites that exist are all saturated,” Andrés Fuertes Darias, regional head of the union, told this newspaper. CSIFwho stressed that the problem is “very serious” in the coastal areas and the midlands.
José Ramón Barroso, general secretary of the CC.OO Education Federation, expressed himself in similar terms, describing the reality experienced by schools and institutes in the southern zone of the Island as “very painful”. “There is an oversaturation of the classrooms and more and more behavioral problems and conflictive situations are being generated for teachers, and this has an impact on the quality of education, which is residing in an important way”, he warned.
INCIDENTS
Precisely, the Arona City Council reported yesterday a fight between students from the Luis Diego Cuscoy Institute in Cabo Blanco (it is the second altercation that has occurred in the last three months), which has led to the reinforcement of the presence of the Local Police and the Civil Guard outside the center.
The City Council considers that behind this type of incident is the “situation of overcrowding” in which the educational centers of the South find themselves, for which reason it demands “urgent solutions” from the Government of the Canary Islands to reduce the current pressure.
The Consistory has already transferred to the Ministry of Education the “imperative need” to build at least one new institute in Arona and expand existing centers in towns such as Valle San Lorenzo, Los Cristianos, El Fraile, Cho and the center of Arona.
Another of the municipalities affected by the boom in the classrooms is Granadilla de Abona, second in population in the South after Arona. Its mayor, José Domingo Regalado, recalled yesterday that “since 2011 no educational infrastructure has been built, despite having ceded municipal land in coastal and suburban areas, and being one of the municipalities with the highest demographic growth in the entire Canary Islands.”
Granadilla de Abona considers a new school for Charco del Pino, a Vocational Training center in San Isidro, the extension to the fourth year of ESO at the Los Abrigos school and the improvement of the CEIP Granadilla and the four institutes with which it is a “priority”. account the municipality.
“The overcrowding is a reality in many centers and educational quality is being lost, because until now it has been alleviated with the opening of the institutes in the afternoon, but with the rate of population growth it is necessary and urgent to build and expand facilities” , remarked the alderman from Granada.
“VERY SERIOUS” DELAY
Andrés Fuertes (CSIF) regretted that the new centers were not built according to the size of the population. “The forecast was not correct and the projects, which are carried out four or five years in advance, were miscalculated,” he said. Both Fuertes and José Ramón Barroso (CC.OO.) described as “very serious” the delay of more than three years to complete the work of the Parque La Reina institute that will replace the barracones, as the IES Guaza is popularly known. “The delay is unacceptable and the worst thing is that this center is already small, it was born with a poor size,” said the regional head of CSIF.
For the general secretary of the Federation of Education of CC.OO, the delay in the completion of the work to finish with the thirty modular classrooms of Guaza is “bleeding”. “Although there have been problems with the construction company, the Administration cannot allow this messing around. There is an urgent need that must be corrected once and for all”, claimed José Ramón Barroso, who recognized the “effort” of the current Government of the Canary Islands in increasing the teaching staff and increasing attention to diversity, although, he insisted, “In the south of Tenerife that effort must be much greater.”
