Madrid, Feb 9 (EFE) .- Although the Government maintains that schools are the safest places, the STES teachers union said this Tuesday that infections are increasing in classrooms and has lamented the “lack of consideration “towards the teachers, who are” in the first line “but are not among the first vaccination groups.
“We are on the front line” of a “very hard and difficult” course, but consideration for teachers is “minimal”, said the head of union action at STES, María Luz González.
“We are a fundamental pillar”, has insisted González, who has demanded that they be considered “risk personnel” in addition to requesting that there be massive screening in the centers to be able to detect asymptomatic people.
Without entering into controversy with the data provided by the Ministry of Health, González has wondered where this information comes from that in schools there are few infections.
According to STES, the number of incidents due to the coronavirus in schools is around 6,000 at the beginning of the year when in the first quarter of the course it was 4,000 or 5,000.
The data provided by the Ministry of Health last Friday indicate that between January 27 and February 4, 413 outbreaks with 2,570 cases had been reported in educational centers, with special incidence in secondary education.
“If the centers are safe to prove it”, for example, with massive screenings that can give a “still photo” of possible infections at a certain time, said José Ramón Merino, head of educational policy at STES.
FFP2 masks and CO2 meters are other requests from teachers, who have emphasized the difference in measurements between autonomous communities.
“Teaching 15 grades with the students seated and the teacher unable to move is not very complex,” argued González, who stressed: “we all want open classrooms but health is more important.”
In addition, he has suggested that when infections in a community increase a lot, the closure of educational centers for ten days could mean “a significant change” in the degree of infections and then resume classes with greater security.
According to this STES spokesperson, teachers “are paying a high price.” “We are second-rate but there we are enduring with people getting sick, quarantined and dying, perhaps we are enduring too much,” he added.
On the other hand, STES has lamented “the silence” of the Ministry of Education to convene a Sectorial Table with the unions to focus on the changes established by the Lomloe or Celaá law, and foresees that the normative development is made with decrees for which there are no time to present allegations.
For STES, Celaá must resolve “fundamental issues” such as access to the public teaching function, the situation of Vocational Training teachers, or the opening of a sanctioning file for concerted centers that separate or discriminate against students on the basis of sex. EFE
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