Chapter 353: Nine-Year Compulsory Education

The industrial department acted quickly, soon coming up with a complete shipbuilding industry integration plan, and passed the vote in the cabinet government.

After passing the vote, the financial department allocated a sum of funds to the industrial department to support the shipbuilding industry, and Spain's rectification of the domestic shipbuilding industry officially began.

The purpose of industry integration is to cultivate some powerful monopoly enterprises, but this kind of plan cannot be made public.

Because to a certain extent, cultivating monopoly enterprises is also exterminating these small enterprises, which is destined to cause dissatisfaction among these small business owners.

But this is a matter of no choice. Small enterprises do not have much effect on the country; only medium and large enterprises with scale have value to the country.

For the sake of the country's interests, the interests of these small shipyards can be abandoned. Of course, in the process of shipyard integration, the industrial department will also pay close attention to the trends of these small shipyards.

The workers of the shipyards will be properly resettled, and they will not lose their jobs because the enterprises they belong to are merged and integrated.

The shareholders of the integrated shipyards will also receive the compensation they deserve according to the market value. Except for their enterprises being integrated and merged, they seem to have no other major losses.

In the process of shipbuilding industry rectification, other departments also provided auxiliary roles.

In order to cultivate more and better shipyard workers for Spain's shipbuilding industry, the education department specially opened several technical training schools related to the shipbuilding industry and reached cooperation with several major shipyards in Spain.

Speaking of technical training related to workers, such technical schools are currently widely welcomed in Spain.

Spain's education system is dual-track, and both cultural education and technical education can get good outlets.

Throughout the primary education stage, Spain's education focuses on teaching basic knowledge, and the knowledge taught is also relatively simple language, mathematics, and historical knowledge.

After entering the six-year middle school stage, students will be stratified. Students with better grades will enter junior high school and high school to study, and their goal is to improve their academic qualifications and eventually become university students with high status.

Another part of students who are not interested in learning or have poor grades can also enter various types of technical training schools.

These technical training schools basically reached cooperation with local factory enterprises, and after students successfully graduated from technical schools, they could basically be assigned jobs.

It is worth mentioning that the income of these students who successfully graduated from technical schools is often higher than that of students with junior high and high school qualifications.

Unless these students can get into university, their income at the initial stage of employment cannot compare to technical students.

Don't look at Spain's per capita annual income of only 229.14 pesetas; the actual annual income of workers has reached nearly 260 pesetas.

The income of these technical workers who graduated from technical schools is higher than that of ordinary workers, generally reaching about 270 pesetas.

After working for a few years and becoming skilled workers, their income is generally above 300 pesetas.

Spain's per capita annual income has increased precisely because of the continuous expansion of the worker scale, and it is increasing every year at a relatively fast speed.

Precisely because Spain's education system has achieved dual-track education, the education department's financial budget has always been relatively high among all departments, second only to the most important national defense department.

In the whole year of 1890, the Spanish government's total financial expenditure reached 1.2021 billion pesetas, of which military expenditure was 335 million pesetas, accounting for 27.87% of Spain's annual total financial expenditure.

The education department's financial budget was second only to military expenditure, reaching 192 million pesetas, accounting for 15.97% of the Spanish government's annual total financial expenditure.

The industrial department ranked third, with a financial budget of 187 million pesetas, accounting for 15.5% of the Spanish government's annual total financial expenditure.

From this, one can see the Spanish government's emphasis on education, and the education minister's right to speak has never been lower than that of important cabinet ministers such as industry and agriculture.

Under such strong investment in education, Spain's educational environment has also been greatly improved compared to 20 years ago.

At the stage when Gao Da just became the King of Spain, Spain's illiteracy rate was close to 70%, the vast majority of people in the country were illiterate, and more than half of the non-illiterate population only had primary school qualifications.

And at the end of 1890, 20 years later, Spain's illiteracy rate had dropped to about 15%. Among them, one part is the elderly population who can no longer receive education, and the other part is young children under the age of 6.

Except for the population who are too young or too old, for all school-age children over the age of 6, the Spanish government has popularized primary school-level compulsory education and encouraged them to carry out higher-level, junior high and high school-level education learning.

Among the nearly 85% of the non-illiterate population, the population with only primary school qualifications accounts for 48.7%, the population with junior high school or secondary technical school qualifications accounts for 37.6%, the population with high school or higher technical school qualifications accounts for 12.9%, and the population with university or higher qualifications is only 0.08%.

From this data, one can also see that Spain's biggest problem at present is the insufficient number of people receiving higher education.

But this is also a matter of no choice. After all, the prerequisite for applying for university is to have a high school qualification, and the prerequisite for entering high school is to have a junior high school qualification.

The good news is that Spain's population with middle school-level qualifications has exceeded half of the non-illiterate population, which also means that the number of university students in Spain will be more and more in the future.

In the first 10 years of Gao Da becoming the King of Spain, the number of university students cultivated by Spain each year was less than 7,000.

And in the last 10 years, the number of university students graduating from all universities in Spain each year has exceeded 14,000, which is twice as many as before.

According to this trend, perhaps when 1900 arrives, the number of university students in Spain can double, and the number of people receiving junior high and high school education can also increase by more than half.

At present, under the premise of popularizing six-year primary school compulsory education nationwide, some members of parliament have begun to discuss nine-year compulsory education.

Nine-year compulsory education is actually adding junior high school compulsory education on the basis of primary school, with the government bearing all tuition fees for students in primary and junior high school stages, accelerating the popularization of secondary education in Spain.

This is of course a good thing for education, but it may not be a good thing for Spain's finances.

The education department also discussed the pros and cons of nine-year compulsory education internally. In the end, Education Minister Alan Carlton was startled by the huge education funding brought by nine-year compulsory education, and then decisively gave up the idea of nine-year compulsory education for the time being.

If nine-year compulsory education is to be popularized, the education department's financial budget must be raised to the same level as military expenditure.

Although Spain's finances are still good, bearing such a large financial expenditure all at once is also a difficult problem for the Spanish government. Originally, Education Minister Alan Carlton was about to give up, but after Gao Da heard the education department's thoughts on nine-year compulsory education, he finally decided to support the education department and let Spain enter a new educational milestone.

Of course, it is unrealistic to realize nine-year compulsory education nationwide all at once. On the one hand, the finances cannot support such a huge expenditure, and on the other hand, the education department is not prepared to fully popularize nine-year compulsory education.

After comprehensive consideration, Gao Da decided to conduct pilots in the two major cities of Ma Deli and Barcelona, and implement nine-year compulsory education regionally to see the effect.

Although the population of these two cities is also large, compared to popularizing nine-year compulsory education nationwide, it will reduce a lot of financial pressure.

On December 11, 1890, Education Minister Alan Carlton submitted a brand-new report on the pilot implementation of nine-year compulsory education to Gao Da, detailing the benefits of implementing nine-year compulsory education in these two cities and what expenses the education department should bear.

The cost brought by nine-year compulsory education is indeed not small. Even if it is only implemented in the two cities of Ma Deli and Barcelona, the education department's financial funding needs to be increased to 20 million pesetas.

However, all these expenditures will not be in vain. Because according to the report of Education Minister Alan Carlton, after three years, that is, when the first batch of junior high school students of nine-year compulsory education graduate, the junior high school qualification population in Ma Deli and Barcelona will increase by more than 10% each year.

Secondary technical education is also counted in nine-year compulsory education. Even if only half of the students choose technical schools, Ma Deli and Barcelona will have thousands more reliable technical workers each year.

This is just two cities. If the scope of nine-year compulsory education is expanded to the whole of Spain, Spain can have nearly 100,000 excellent workers each year.

This is a huge milestone for the education industry, and it is also a huge breakthrough and progress for the industry.

After these technical workers who have studied systematically enter work, they can effectively improve Spain's worker technical level. The higher the level of workers, the higher the income they can get naturally.

In this way, the popularization of nine-year compulsory education will not only change the status quo of education, but also change the status quo of industry and Spain's economy.

Except for the government's wallet being a bit thinner, it seems that there are no other disadvantages.

After Gao Da confirmed that there was no problem with this nine-year compulsory education pilot implementation plan, he let Education Minister Alan Carlton submit this plan to the cabinet government, let the cabinet government vote to pass it, and then allocate funds for implementation.

The cabinet government's vote was also passed quickly. Whether it was Prime Minister Canovas or other cabinet ministers, there was no need to oppose the plan that Gao Da clearly supported.

What's more, if this nine-year compulsory education pilot plan can be successful, it is indeed a huge progress for Spain.

Why do Gao Da and cabinet ministers believe so much in the changes brought by compulsory education?

This has to mention the important achievements brought by Spain's primary school compulsory education. Because the government bears all tuition fees in the primary school stage, the expenses of students in the primary school learning stage are reduced by more than half.

Almost all school-age children in Spain have participated in primary school compulsory education, and the enrollment rate of school-age children has reached a terrifying 97.3%.

Except for children with congenital defects, almost all children can enjoy free primary school education. Even those from extremely poor families can apply for additional education subsidies.

For those families who are indeed poor and cannot afford student expenses even after tuition fees are waived, the Spanish government will fully bear all expenses of students in the primary school stage, including miscellaneous fees, meal fees, and accommodation fees, etc.

For most families who are poor but not so poor, they can also apply for scholarships specially established by the royal family.

The application difficulty of scholarships is slightly easier than the former, and there is a certain quota to apply for each year.

In addition to scholarships, there are also awards specially established for students with good character and learning in various stages of primary school, junior high school, high school, and university.

Scholarships are specially established for poor students, while awards are aimed at all students with good academic performance. Of course, if a student is poor and has good academic performance, they can enjoy both scholarships and awards at the same time.

Gao Da's expenditure on awards and scholarships each year reaches tens of millions of pesetas, and currently, millions of students have received awards or scholarships issued by the royal family.

Undoubtedly, this is Gao Da's means of winning over the hearts of the people.

A considerable part of the income earned by the royal family's enterprises will be returned to the people. Whether it is subsidies for the poor or scholarships for poor students, etc., these are all good deeds done by Gao Da for all the people of Spain.

Such payment also has quite rich returns. Even if many people know that the royal family's wealth is rich enough to rival a country, everyone has no jealousy towards the royal family.

After all, the royal family spends a lot of money on subsidies for the poor every year, and that money has really flowed into the pockets of the poor.

Regarding subsidies for the poor, Gao Da controls it quite strictly. No link is allowed to be deducted, and it must be issued to the poor completely.

Regarding this point, Gao Da also specially instructed Spain's political performance assessment department. As long as things about deducting subsidies for the poor are discovered, local government officials will not want to be rated as excellent in that year's assessment, and basically, they will all end with a poor result.

After obtaining a poor political performance evaluation, local officials will not want to be promoted in a short period of time, and being able to keep their official position is already quite good.

For the nine-year compulsory education that is being piloted, Gao Da gave Education Minister Alan Carlton a task.

If nine-year compulsory education is well implemented in the two cities of Ma Deli and Barcelona and has achieved quite good results, then Gao Da will consider fully implementing nine-year compulsory education in a few years.

As the education minister who proposed and promoted nine-year compulsory education, Alan Carlton can naturally also obtain a quite rich political performance.

Relying on the political performance of promoting nine-year compulsory education, it is not a difficult thing for Alan Carlton to obtain a title in the future.

Because the implementation of nine-year compulsory education takes several years to see results, Gao Da also directly promised Alan Carlton that he would continue to be re-elected as education minister in the next cabinet government until nine-year compulsory education has results.

If the implementation of nine-year compulsory education is good, Alan Carlton has hope to go further in the cabinet.

Anyway, the cabinet government will experience major changes in the next term, and Prime Minister Canovas, who is over 60 years old, is also destined to withdraw from the political stage.

By then, Gao Da doesn't mind giving more room for upward mobility to capable people. The Spanish government still needs more fresh blood. These fresh blood will not only bring more vitality to the Spanish government, but also make the Spanish government more pioneering, rather than conservative.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 354 =====