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EDUCATION

Spain’s students strike against education cuts

Protesters burned bins at a top Spanish university campus on Thursday and hundreds marched through the streets in a national strike against education cuts that has seen scores of arrests.

Published: 27 March 2014 16:22 CET
Updated: 27 March 2014 17:32 CET
Spain's students strike against education cuts
Young protesters called for Education Minister Jose Ignacio Wert to resign over reforms that have seen cuts in spending on schools and universities. Photo: Pierre Phillipe Marcou/AFP

A Madrid police spokeswoman told AFP that officers arrested one person on Thursday morning "for possession of flammable material" after bins were burned at Madrid's Complutense university.

Police also released on bail 54 people who were arrested on Wednesday for burning bins and occupying offices at the Complutense campus in the west of Madrid, the spokeswoman said.

Early on Thursday afternoon, several hundred high school pupils and university students marched noisily but peacefully in central Madrid in a demonstration against the crisis education reforms.

"No to education cuts," they yelled, calling for Education Minister Jose Ignacio Wert to resign over reforms that have seen cuts in spending on schools and universities while higher education fees have been increased.

"It makes me sad because they are not giving everyone the opportunity to study," said one demonstrator, 18-year-old high school pupil Karim Martinez.

"They are raising fees and cutting scholarships. A lot of parents do not have the money to pay for university."

The national Students' Union called for similar demonstrations around the country on Thursday, the second of two days of strikes in high schools and universities.

Spain's conservative government launched spending cuts in 2012 that aimed to save 150 billion euros ($206 billion) to stabilise the public finances of the euro zone's fourth-biggest economy.

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EDUCATION

Sweden’s Social Democrats call for ban on new free schools

Sweden's opposition Social Democrats have called for a total ban on the establishment of new profit-making free schools, in a sign the party may be toughening its policies on profit-making in the welfare sector.

Published: 18 April 2024 16:09 CEST
Sweden's Social Democrats call for ban on new free schools

“We want the state to slam on the emergency brakes and bring in a ban on establishing [new schools],” the party’s leader, Magdalena Andersson, said at a press conference.

“We think the Swedish people should be making the decisions on the Swedish school system, and not big school corporations whose main driver is making a profit.” 

Almost a fifth of pupils in Sweden attend one of the country’s 3,900 primary and secondary “free schools”, first introduced in the country in the early 1990s. 

Even though three quarters of the schools are run by private companies on a for-profit basis, they are 100 percent state funded, with schools given money for each pupil. 

This system has come in for criticism in recent years, with profit-making schools blamed for increasing segregation, contributing to declining educational standards and for grade inflation. 

In the run-up to the 2022 election, Andersson called for a ban on the companies being able to distribute profits to their owners in the form of dividends, calling for all profits to be reinvested in the school system.  

READ ALSO: Sweden’s pioneering for-profit ‘free schools’ under fire 

Andersson said that the new ban on establishing free schools could be achieved by extending a law banning the establishment of religious free schools, brought in while they were in power, to cover all free schools. 

“It’s possible to use that legislation as a base and so develop this new law quite rapidly,” Andersson said, adding that this law would be the first step along the way to a total ban on profit-making schools in Sweden. 

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