Schools
This pilot project is carried out in the CRA Boqueixón-Vedra, a rural school grouping formed by 7 units in 6 small villages: Lestedo (administrative head of the CRA), Camporrapado (2 units), Sergude, Sarandón, San Fins de Sales and San Xulián de Sales. They are about 30 km far from each other.
Here you can see a map where they are located.
See CRA Boqueixón-Vedra in a bigger map
The school model
In Spanish rural villages with little population, there are not enough children to count on a traditional school infrastructure in every village. To avoid having small children travel everyday to school, Spanish educational system counts on a certain type of school for small villages called “Grouped Rural School” (CRA in Spanish), which offers a good solution for small schools which are not too far from each other (approx. 30 km max.)
A CRA is actually a group of small schools (with one to three classrooms each) under the same administrative name that share resources and teachers among them. Each of these schools can count with as few as 5 children, with ages between 3-11 years. Typically, each school has two or three classrooms, and different levels are taught simultaneously, sharing the same classroom. This situation can be very demanding for teachers, who have to prepare several subjects and levels to teach simultaneously, as well as making sure that all students get involved in learning activities at all moments.
There is a “main” school, placed in the bigger village, which hosts all management and administrative issues of the “Grouped Rural School”, and the rest of smaller schools (up to 15 or so), which count on one or more “permanent” teachers who act as course tutors and teach the common subjects to all children from each of these schools. There are also “travelling” subject teachers who cover areas such as foreign language, physical ed, music, etc. who are not assigned to any of these schools, but are shared among all these schools.