The Baix Penedès Institute of El Vendrell has been schooling a blind student for three months who only speaks French and Arabic without the specific resources that the teaching staff considers necessary to attend to her. The situation has been transferred to the Department of Education and has reopened the discomfort in the educational community due to the lack of means to apply inclusive schooling under proper conditions.
Teachers at the center maintain that, as of today, they do not have sufficient tools to respond to the needs of the minor. They assure that the problem is not limited to the language, but also affects the specialized attention required by a student with visual impairment in an ordinary environment.
"We have no resources to attend to her" - Teachers of the center, Instituto Baix Penedès
The teaching staff questions the lack of real means
The teachers explain that the reception classroom, designed to facilitate language learning, is not useful in this case. They indicate that it is a resource designed visually to work on the language in a written and spoken way, which is why it is not useful for a blind student who also arrives without knowing the usual languages of the center.
"We fill our mouths with inclusive school but we do not provide it with the essential resources" - Teachers of the center, Baix Penedès Institute
Along the same lines, they emphasize that the center does not have adapted resources for a situation of these characteristics and that the response received so far has been insufficient. The teaching staff maintains that the psycho-pedagogical counseling and guidance teams, which are part of the educational support services for inclusive schools, limited themselves to holding a brief interview.
"In the case of this student the reception classroom is not useful and in the center we do not have resources for these cases" - Institute teachers, Baix Penedès Institute
The teachers add that, for the moment, a response from the ONCE has not arrived either, while the student continues attending the institute.
Follow-up from the territorial services
From the Department of Education it is indicated that the territorial services of Penedès are following up on the case to find a solution. That is, for now, the only response provided while the center insists that the need is immediate.
The situation is framed within a broader claim by teachers in Catalonia. The lack of resources for inclusive education is among the demands of teachers' protests these days. Among the most repeated complaints are the scarcity of adequate spaces and, above all, the lack of staff to attend to students with special needs.
The inclusive school model seeks to guarantee that all students, including those with specific needs, can access education in the same classrooms. In practice, many centers maintain that this objective clashes with tight staffing and with support that does not always arrive when needed.
The educational community does not rule out mobilizations
The educational community of Baix Penedès Institute does not rule out protest actions to demand a response. In El Vendrell there is already a recent precedent. Last academic year, in another center of the municipality, a mobilization of students, families, and teachers allowed a student to remain enrolled after Educació had communicated that they could not continue due to lack of a caregiver.
That precedent now weighs on an institute that demands concrete and urgent solutions. The teaching staff's demand involves having specialized personnel and resources so that the schooling of this student does not depend solely on the will of the center, but on effective attention adapted to her needs.