From Quererla es Crearla, as a Social Movement for Inclusive Education, we share the desire expressed here by many families that their sons and daughters, who feel abandoned in schools, be valued and cared for in them, and that schools have the necessary resources so that they feel they belong there, as a second home. This is what the Spanish Constitution and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities defend, and the LOMLOE mandates progress along this path.

However, the Regional Government of Andalusia is carrying out a regressive process in our education system: since the approval of the LOMLOE until last school year, segregation in Andalusia has increased by more than 16%. They are increasing the labeling of students with SEN, opening new specific classrooms against the law and inclusive education, and they are doing so while shamelessly closing mainstream classrooms in public education: just last school year, nearly 700 public preschool and primary classrooms were closed. In other words, the Andalusian Government is perpetrating an enormous deterioration of public education and its inclusive nature. They are closing public classrooms, and the ones they open go against inclusive education.

To advance on the path of making all students, without exception, feel that the school is theirs, build friendships, and learn together, it is not enough to demand resources; it is necessary that they be demanded, provided, and used with an appropriate approach. If resources continue to support the idea that certain students have deficits, we will continue to assume that their exclusion is their own fault. If we continue to think in terms of individual resources, we will continue to support an individualistic and competitive school that goes against inclusion. If resources depend on labeling students, we will be stigmatizing them and widening the gap between students.

Inclusive Education is not a right exclusively for students labeled by disability. It is a right for all students, without discrimination. Inclusive education implies a transformation of the education system, which is based on raising expectations for all students, fostering cooperation, building valuable learning for them, living together to learn how to live in diverse societies by valuing differences, and developing the participation of the entire community as a way to build democracy, moving schools away from market laws. Therefore:

We want a school that promotes coexistence and participation on equal terms, that identifies and eliminates the barriers that hinder the presence, participation, and learning of all students. These barriers do not lie within the students, but in their environment.

We demand that support be provided in the mainstream school, as stated in the Fourth Additional Provision of the LOMLOE and the United Nations Convention. Specific classrooms, as well as the tendency toward the “special or specific,” are forms of segregation contrary to inclusive education, which prevent the transformation of the exclusionary system.

We remind that all forms of school segregation result in a dependent life, without full recognition of rights, and without a professional and social future that allows for participation on equal terms with the rest of the citizenry.

The United Nations has denounced the discrimination within the Spanish education system in two reports. We demand to the Regional Government of Andalusia to comply with the law. Inclusion is not a pedagogical option, but an ethical and legal imperative.

Enough of classrooms and resources that segregate!

We want a school for an inclusive society!