Editor’s note: This article was first published in April 2012. It is a news item on the Rajoy government’s Constitutional Court challenge to Andalusia’s 2012 teacher recruitment exams; the outcome is not covered.
The Platform of Interim Teachers and Candidates for Public Education accuses Spain’s central government of leaving the staff who retire this year without “replacement”. They argue that Mariano Rajoy’s government could have halted the exams Andalusia had called to hire 2,389 teachers back in January, but it didn’t, and instead waited until the last moment.
The Junta de Andalucía’s education minister, Francisco Álvarez de la Chica, argues that there is only one explanation for this behaviour:
“They wanted to do as much harm as possible to the candidates and their families. They have acted in a cold, calculated, insensitive and cowardly way by delaying the appeal to the Constitutional Court until the very last day. The PP has punished Andalusia for saying ‘no’ to the cuts.”
The government’s decision to go to the Constitutional Court means the call for applications is suspended for five months. The 33,154 people who were hoping for a post will no longer be able to sit the exam.
For his part, Javier Arenas, president of the PP in Andalusia, criticized the Junta for seeking a confrontation with the Spanish government over the halting of the public teaching posts, which was intended to help bring the accounts back into line.
Be that as it may, the voice that matters is that of the candidates who have spent months preparing for exams that are not going to happen. They have lost time, money and, as a result, the chance to look for other job opportunities in the meantime. Many are asking what all the effort they put in was for, and what about the money they paid every month to exam-prep academies, which nobody is going to give back. That’s where things stand.
Source: Ideal.es
Featured image: Jebulon, CC0 1.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
