Representatives of the Tourism sector want to postpone the start of the school year because of the high temperatures that will almost certainly be experienced by students in their classrooms and in order to boost holiday reservations in its resorts.
The sector believes that the month of September could be extremely productive for the sector if families did not have to take their children to school and while AMPA warn that delaying classes would force the school year to be extended, possibly until July, they also request that measures be taken against high temperatures and possible heat stroke.
According to Miguel Ángel Sotillos, president of the Association of Tourist Apartment Entrepreneurs (Aptur), on the day before the start of the new school year start much of the accommodation, he represents is empty, so despite the good weather that now dominates large parts of the calendar in the province, many apartments will only be reserved by people without children.
He points out that the solution involves consideration of a possible change in the date for the start of the new school year, which would not only allow the first two weeks of September to be available to holidaymakers with children, it would also protect children from high temperatures. “If adults are told that they should not work be working in excess of a certain temperature, it is logical to apply the same criteria to children,” he said.
Fede Fuster, the president of the Hotel management Association, Hosbec, considers that this would be a beneficial measure and his counterpart in Aptur agrees, since “there are many factors that recommend it” such as the weather conditions that are regularly occurring in the month of September.
However, the Associations of student families, APMA, do not share this point of view because they consider that what the tourism sector could gain in September it would lose in June or July: “It simply cannot be done, it is illegal” -says Rafael Araujo, technical secretary of Concapa. “By law there must be 175 school days each year, so starting later in September would mean teaching until July.”
Where the AMPAs do agree with the tourism sector is the need to alleviate the effects of heat so that classes can be held in adequate conditions. Araújo points out that “in the same way that schools have adapted to cope with the high temperatures during the elections, we should be doing the same with our children, so that the rule that classes cannot be held in temperatures above 27 degrees is complied with.”
Currently the next school year is planned to begin on Monday, September 11, and will end on Friday, June 21, 2024.
