Attempt to curb foreign student numbers

THE Balearic Socialist Party (PSIB) has proposed measures to stop schools accepting immigrant children if more than half the pupils are foreigners.
Socialist deputy Aina Radó said yesterday that her group will present a proposal to Parliament on September 5, asking the government to apply this measure. She said it was designed to spread out students from other countries, to facilitate their integration. “I know of schools with classrooms that don't have a single Spanish student, never mind any who speak Majorcan or Catalan,” she said at a Press conference yesterday. She claimed that the recommended proportion was a maximum of 35 to 40 per cent of immigrant children per school. She pointed out that in 2003, Parliament approved a proposal calling on the Balearic government to do something about the problem. But, she claimed, education minister Francesc Fiol had done nothing, “justifying his passiveness” in the right of parents to choose their children's school. But, she claimed, this was false, as “when the Spanish Constitution speaks of free choice of school, it refers to the type of school, religious or non-denominational, not to specific schools.” She went on to say, “parents can choose, but always subject to a schools plan designed by the government.” “The free choice of school was a Partido Popular slogan, even though they were aware it was false. If a school is full, that right cannot be exercised. Anyway there are many places in the Balearics were there is only one school, and in these cases, parents have no choice but to register their children there.” She claimed that the minister had admitted that the situation will get worse in time “and no measures have been planned.”