The Barcelona Education Consortium has been working together with the municipal districts and areas concerned since this May, in the belief that face-to-face education for all children and teenagers is an essential service guaranteeing equal opportunities, socialisation and care. That means everything has to be done to ensure the school year starts with students coming to classes in person.

The result of this work will help to meet the requests of 44 schools for more interior spaces for teaching activities and the request of 117 schools for outdoor spaces for open-air activities.

To ensure good coordination between facilities and municipal spaces and schools and institutes, an office for coordinating neighbourhood and school spaces is to be created which will bring about and manage in each case transferred and priority uses of public space and facilities.

An office for coordinating schools and health in the city will also be set up with the Barcelona Public Health Agency, the Health Consortium, the Education Consortium and the Barcelona Municipal Institute of Education, which will see to the implementation of preventive measures and health tests carried out on both students and teachers. It will monitory and assess the educational community in general and each school in particular and intervene when necessary if there are cases of COVID-19.

At the same time, the city’s 102 municipal nursery schools will receive extra educational-support staff to ensure, among other things, morning day care from 8 am to 9 am, without  have to mix groups and disrupt their hermetic arrangements.

Materials were installed over the summer to divide up playgrounds and common spaces, so that each children’s group would have, besides its own classroom, a own section of space where they will be free from contact with children from other class groups.