Dad and mom "A" have a son who will go to school for the first time in September. They start looking at schools to see which one they like best and which one best suits their way of understanding education. They are also interested in being close to home, to facilitate family logistics.
After visiting several schools, they decide on one, which is the one they put first in the application for enrollment. In the second and third option they put the following that they would choose. The day of the resolution arrives and they are not granted the first school, but since the second and the third are also filled with children whose parents had chosen them as the first option, they are given a school that has nothing to do with what they would have chosen and also far, far from home.
Dad and mom "B" have a child in the same situation as the other parents. After looking at several schools they know that the one they like the most can never touch them, because it does not belong to their area, so they decide to put as a first option a school that they know can touch them, without really being the one they would like for their child.
These two stories have been reproducing years and years in thousands of Spanish homes. Every year thousands of parents realize that choosing school is, in the end, a fallacy, because from the moment that there are different areas in the same city with different scores, the ability to choose is lost.
Now it seems that there are those who have realized that this is a grievance for many parents because the President of the Community of Madrid, Esperanza Aguirre, has proposed the Elimination of areas in cities so that parents can freely choose their children's school.
The objective of this measure is to solve, as far as possible, the problems discussed a moment ago, or situations as absurd as a child who lives 100 meters from a school can not choose it, because they do not belong to their area, but one that lives 3 km from it.
In this way parents will have a much wider range of possibilities and it will be they who have to shuffle if they prefer to bet on closeness, educational methodology or both.
Since, like the “B” parents, many couples ended up choosing the least bad school in their area or the one in which they were most likely to enter, most schools have always been filled and there has not been much chance of knowing which schools The population likes them more.
Let's say that with this there was a trap, because the news came to say that almost 90% of children entered the first option chosen by parents, without commenting that The first option chosen was not always the one that the parents really would have chosen if they had had freedom.
I think it is a fabulous measure that will serve to show the tastes of parents, because now a free and real choice can be made. In this way the less requested schools must work to know what the cause is and to try to improve.
Hopefully it will be carried out (be it by the political party whatsoever) and hopefully it will be extended throughout Spain. Since our public education system is far from exemplary, unless they allow parents to choose the school we consider best, or the least bad.
