Another chaos in education: 45,000 teachers don't know where they'll work because of a mistake

The latest operation to allocate teaching positions in Catalonia has derailed before it even began. Departament d’Educació removed the assignment lists for the upcoming school year from its website after less than twenty-four hours online. Conselleria admits to "unjustified incidents" and leaves thousands of teachers in an employment limbo that will last, at least, one more week.

A failure that affects almost the entire teaching staff

According to data provided by Govern, the incident affects about 45,000 primary and secondary teachers. The error allowed some interim teachers to move ahead of tenured teachers in the order of preference and excluded about 800 positions from the draw that were never offered.

Internal sources emphasize to media outlets such as La Vanguardia that the technical instructions sent to IT teams weren't followed. The department has opened an information file and doesn't rule out sanctions if human responsibility is proven and not just software errors. The process will be repeated next week and will be supervised by Síndic de Greuges and the unions, who'll participate as observers to ensure transparency.

Union discontent soars

USTEC, the majority union, describes the situation as "the most serious experienced in education in recent times." Its spokesperson, Iolanda Segura, reports that the provisional lists already contained errors and that many worsened in the final version. Segura warns of a "domino effect" that could force a review of all positions, including the so-called profiled ones, reserved for specific projects and highly questioned due to their limited competition under equal conditions.

Anxiety is spreading among teachers. Those who had a stable position now fear a forced transfer; those who were waiting for their first appointment don't know if they'll have to cross the region at the end of August. "Uncertainty is causing real stress," representatives from CCOO and CGT summarize.

An episode that worsens the Catalan education crisis

The setback comes at a delicate moment for Catalan education, which has been accumulating failure after failure. In mid-June, Consellera Esther Niubó admitted that the latest basic skills tests show a continued decline in academic level since 2015. The head of education promised to focus on language, mathematics, and teacher training, as well as to stabilize staff to reduce high turnover:

In any case, the margin for improvement is narrowing. Recent reports from Fundació Bofill - one of those responsible for this situation - warn that nine out of ten students with low performance in primary repeat those results in secondary. Govern plans to split groups and strengthen support, but they need finalized staff lists in July to start the school year normally. The current chaos threatens that schedule.

Next steps

Educació is working against the clock to publish new lists next week. Until then, school principals can't plan schedules or projects and affected teachers don't know in which province they'll have to report on September 2. The unions demand compensation if the delay causes relocation expenses or loss of pay.

Meanwhile, while the causes are being investigated, Conselleria insists that the IT system will be debugged before the second assignment and offers a public apology to those affected. If it fails again, the start of the 2025-2026 school year could begin with classrooms without assigned teachers and another political crisis on the table.