SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Nov. 21. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Minister of Education of the Government of the Canary Islands, Poli Suárez, announced this Tuesday in the Plenary Session of Parliament that the families of the 1,738 minors enrolled in Enclave classrooms and Special Education Centers for Early Childhood and Primary throughout the Canary Islands will stop paying the tuition fee. dining room as a complementary service.
This will come into force next January with an investment of 733,000 euros.
The Ministry details in a note that this is a historical demand of this sector of the educational community that until now had to assume the cost of the dining room despite it being part of the curricular content related to food that is taught in the classroom by teachers. of therapeutic pedagogy.
“They had been demanding for many years that they be listened to and that the anomaly that they were suffering by assuming the payment of the meals for these boys and girls be resolved, when in reality it is just another subject that should be free in public education,” Suárez explained.
For this reason, the counselor stressed, “we have urgently addressed this injustice and have sought a formula so that families no longer have to assume a fee that they are not entitled to pay by right,” both in the canteens directly managed by the centers as indirect.
The measure, which will be made effective through the release of funds by the Ministry of Education directly to the centers, takes into consideration that the dining room is part of the curricular specification adapted to basic needs related to food, such as the development of swallowing abilities, voluntary food intake or the progressive incorporation of food, a series of contents that involve the use of the dining room and that are developed in the classroom during the minors’ teaching activity.
In some cases, families were paying with their own resources monthly fees of up to 90 euros, with the resulting economic hardship, to which is added having to also assume the costs of the therapy dynamics or multidisciplinary clinics that their children require.
With this new financial item, the subsidy that the Ministry allocates to the use of the canteens by students in vulnerable situations amounts to 1,100,000 euros, among which is 370,000 euros for the coverage of ‘quota 0’ minors.
“My personal commitment and that of the entire Ministry team with special educational needs, families and groups that require especially sensitive and humane treatment is real, with facts and an absolute priority,” concluded Poli Suárez.
