More teachers

A strange move by the Balearic government yesterday to recruit an additional 134 English-speaking teaching auxiliaries. Firstly, the government has now admitted that schools were not prepared for the new three language teaching plan and secondly they have effectively agreed with the striking teachers who have said from the start that they didn´t have the necessary resources. But also it shows that the Balearic government means business and they are not backing down. Balearic President Jose Ramon Bauza has said that it wants the English, Spanish and Catalan teaching plan introduced this term and there will be no surrender despite the teacher´ s strike. The announcement yesterday appears to be a yet another example of the Balearic government trying to introduce English into local schools on the cheap. These auxiliaries earn about 700 euros a month far less than your average teacher but at the same time they do perform a valuable service. It will be interesting to see how the teacher´s respond. In some ways they can claim victory because they will have help but it is not the help they want. The teachers want the government to abandon the three language system completely until they have more resources. An interesting development which is going to do little to ease the tension between teachers and the government which has meant that local school children, in some cases, have missed four weeks of lessons.