The need for a new decree on teaching staff in Catalonia

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Jesús Moral Castrillo

The problem of teaching staff allocations

The current situation regarding teaching staff allocations in Catalonia reveals a series of structural dysfunctions that directly affect the functioning of schools, the quality of support provided to students, and the professional conditions of teachers. Despite the formal existence of allocation criteria, the system does not guarantee a genuine correspondence between the educational needs of schools and the human resources assigned to them.

In many cases, schools facing high levels of educational complexity—arising from socioeconomic conditions, cultural and linguistic diversity, or a high proportion of students requiring specific educational support—operate with staffing levels that are either insufficient or poorly aligned with their needs. This situation generates excessive teaching workloads, difficulties in implementing educational projects, instability within staff teams, and a growing sense of comparative disadvantage between schools and territories.

Moreover, responsibility for managing teaching staff has gradually shifted towards individual schools, which often find themselves forced to assemble professional teams within a limited and inflexible allocation. This transfer of responsibilities, without the necessary resources or appropriate instruments, has increased the strain on both teachers and school leadership, turning staffing management into a recurrent source of internal conflict.

Another significant issue concerns the ambiguous definition of teaching profiles and the lack of meaningful participation by the teaching staff and collegial bodies. Teaching profiles do not always correspond to objective pedagogical needs; their creation can lead to arbitrary practices in the allocation of positions and, in some cases, has restricted teacher mobility. At the same time, the participation of teaching teams in staffing decisions is often merely formal, without any real capacity to influence outcomes, which weakens shared leadership and generates frustration and demotivation.

Calculation of teaching staff and the system for filling posts

One of the principal shortcomings of Decree 39/2014 lies in the absence of a clear distinction between the calculation of teaching staff allocations and the system used to fill teaching posts. At present, these two processes are normatively intertwined, which undermines transparency, creates confusion and shifts structural tensions onto the moment when positions are filled.

The calculation of staffing levels should be a strictly objective process based on public, stable and verifiable indicators determining the human resources allocated to each school according to its real needs. When this calculation is neither clear nor explicit, structural shortages of resources inevitably surface during recruitment and allocation processes, which are then perceived as arbitrary or unfair.

A new decree should establish unequivocally that the calculation of staffing levels is a prior, independent and non-discretionary step, while the allocation of posts is the mechanism through which positions are assigned within that staffing framework. This separation is essential to guarantee territorial equity, legal certainty and the confidence of teachers, while preventing recruitment processes from being used to compensate for structural deficiencies in the system.

Transparency and public data

The lack of transparency is another central weakness of the current model. The existing decree does not require the publication of aggregated data on staffing calculations or the allocation of teaching posts, nor does it mandate the analysis of the territorial or sectoral impact of the decisions taken. Without comprehensive, systematic and publicly available information, genuine accountability and rigorous evaluation of the system are impossible.

This opacity makes it difficult to identify inequalities, limits the capacity to correct imbalances and reinforces the perception of discretionary decision-making. A public education system requires accessible data in order to ensure institutional legitimacy and public trust.

A new decree should therefore establish the obligation to publish regular information on the criteria used to calculate staffing levels, the territorial distribution of resources, the typology of teaching posts and the relative weight of objective and subjective criteria in the allocation of positions. Such transparency should be understood as a tool for continuous improvement rather than as a punitive mechanism of control.

Oversight, supervision and governance

The current model also reveals clear weaknesses in terms of governance. There are no stable monitoring bodies, no structured spaces for social dialogue, and no systemic mediation mechanisms capable of anticipating and resolving conflicts in a preventive manner. As a consequence, many disagreements become entrenched within schools or are displaced to judicial or trade union arenas.

A new decree should strengthen shared governance through the creation of stable supervisory bodies involving the educational administration, the inspectorate, school leadership teams, social partners and independent experts. These bodies should oversee the consistent application of the decree, analyse incidents, review criteria and formulate proposals for improvement.

At the same time, clear mechanisms of internal and external oversight must be established for decisions involving qualitative assessments, ensuring that such decisions are justified, reviewable and consistent with the principles of equality, merit and competence. Oversight should not be perceived as a limitation of institutional autonomy but as a guarantee of quality and fairness.

Benefits for teachers, schools and students

Reforming the decree on teaching staff allocations would produce clear and wide-ranging benefits. For teachers, it would provide greater stability, legal certainty, transparency and professional recognition, reducing the sense of arbitrariness and the strain associated with current processes. For schools, it would allow staffing levels to be better aligned with their specific realities, strengthening team cohesion and the viability of educational projects.

For students, a fair and transparent staffing system would translate into better educational support—particularly in schools facing greater complexity—and into a reduction in territorial inequalities. Ultimately, such reform would reinforce both the quality of the public education system and society’s confidence in educational institutions.

In conclusion, the need for a new decree governing teaching staff allocations does not arise from a temporary concern but from a structural problem within the Catalan education system. Clearly distinguishing between staffing calculations and the allocation of posts, guaranteeing transparency and public data, strengthening oversight and shared governance, and placing teachers at the centre of the model are essential conditions for moving towards a more just, efficient and sustainable system.

Source: educational EVIDENCE

Rights: Creative Commons