Over 8,500 infants start the year around the municipal nursery school network
The 2022-2023 school year at the city’s network of nursery schools gets under way on Monday, 12 September, with 8,545 young children up to the age of three attending the 607 existing groups around 103 nursery schools. An agreement was reached with the education community to start the year on the usual date, giving enough time for changes to the school calendar to be negotiated and enough time for centres to adapt to them while maintaining service requisites for families and labour rights for staff.
The new nursery school year starts with some changes and improvements, beyond free schooling for 2-3 year-olds as decreed by the Government of Catalonia, plus extra support for children with special education needs, carried out by the Barcelona Municipal Institute for Education (IMEB). Funding has been increased by 64% to boost the hours of support provided for professionals for infants with specific needs.
Another new aspect is the improvement to specialised support for infants with serious disabilities and/or serious health needs, with the introduction of a travelling nursing service to assess and train education staff in certain procedures. This service will also carry out direct support tasks with infants when a specialist is needed.
The service to provide greater diversity in hours has also been extended. This service was already offered at the Caspolino nursery school (Gràcia) and the Germanetes nursery school (Eixample). These have now been joined by the Xiroi municipal nursery school (Les Corts) and the Petit Príncep (Sant Martí). Diversity of hours allows centres to enrol children for mornings only (9 am to 1 pm) or afternoons only (3 pm to 7 pm), or full-time hours from 8 am to 5 pm (including early morning childminding before school begins).
Improvements have been carried out this summer, taking advantage of the summer break and as part of the ‘Cuidem les bressol’ programme. Work to extend, improve and renovate facilities is still going on in some nursery schools, with measures to green up playgrounds and paint classrooms. Work on energy transition and thermal comfort will continue until December. In all, 72 work projects have been completed or are under way at 72 centres, with an overall investment of nearly 1.7 million euros.
Municipal nursery schools have a total combined capacity of 8,588 places this year, of which 4,460 places were available for new infants. The process fulfilled 57% of the demand for pre-enrolment places, with 7,662 applications representing a 14% increase in demand compared to last year.
