The Minister of Education and Vocational Training, Martí March, has signed the agreements on free education services for the third year of a nursery school with the mayors of the town councils of Santa Maria, Calvià, Sant Llorenç and Marratxí. These are the first agreements with public nursery schools in Mallorca.

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So far, almost all the agreements with the nursery schools of the complementary network of the Islands have been signed, as there are only 2 agreements left to be signed out of the 52 that exist in total.

In the case of the public centres, 5 agreements have already been signed: 1 with the town council of Vila in Eivissa and today’s 4 in Mallorca. In total, these agreements guarantee free third years of infant education in 18 public schools in Mallorca and Ibiza. Specifically, Calvià has 10 nursery schools, Santa Maria has 1, Sant Llorenç has 3 and Marratxí has 2.

Councillor Martí March stressed that this initiative means institutionalising a stage that both the LOMLOE and the LEIB consider to be educational. “I am convinced that the next legislature will be one of the institutionalisations of 0-3 education and this will involve more measures such as improving the situation of workers among others”.

In the next few days, the signing of the remaining public nursery schools and the complementary network of the Balearic Islands will continue.

Once the agreements have been signed, payments will be processed to enable free childcare to be provided from 1 September 2022. The Regional Ministry will make three payments in advance, corresponding to two four-month periods and a final two-month period.

In total in the Balearic Islands, to make this measure possible, it is planned to invest 18.6 million per school year, so that both public nursery schools and those in the complementary network will receive a contribution of 45,000 euros for each 2-3-year-old classroom. This investment will cover the running costs of these classrooms during the ordinary school hours for this stage of education, a minimum of 4 hours for 10 months, which means a cost per year of 2,500 euros per pupil, at a rate of 250 euros per month.

The plan is to reach 5,274 pupils aged 2-3 years in 160 schools on the Islands. The modules will cover the cost of 293 2-3-year-old classrooms in public schools and the complementary network. In the 2022-2023 school year, there will be 186 educational centres for 0-3-year-olds, of which 108 are public, 52 are private and 26 are private.

In addition to free education for the 2-3 year-olds, this academic year 2022-23 there will also be an increase in the allocation for the 0-1 and 1-2-year-old modules, which means reaching 10,000 euros/unit in the public network (up until now it was 7,000 euros) and 5,000 euros/unit in the complementary network (up until now it was 2,000 euros). In addition, it includes other improvement measures such as the increase in the number of staff in the early intervention teams (EAP), with six additional professionals, and the new call for the creation of new public places scheduled for November 2022.

You can download a voice clip of the councillor Martí March via the following link: https://we.tl/t-J2zBIbFtHi