By: maría antonia casanova  (Page 7/8)

1. Creation of the Traveling Support for Immigrant Student Service (SAI). This service involves the dedication of a variable number of professors who assist pupils throughout the school year who do not know Spanish, and also advise the teaching staff as to how to best attend to their pupils.

2. Compensation for previous inequalities in education, such as for a model of Spanish as a second language which respects other cultures. Ex: There has been an increase in the amount of support professors in schools from 374 to more than 1,500 in the 2004/2005 course year.

3. Reservation of plazas for students from different countries established during the schooling periods, which leads to a progressive balance within the community of Madrid.

4. Provision of cafeteria aids, considered as part of complimentary actions, whose quantity in the 2005/2006 course year ascended to almost 25.000.000 €.

5. Supply of free text books for the students in need.

6. Regulation of measures in compensation in the Obligatory Secondary Education by means of four curricular and organizational modalities, including support groups to study Spanish outside of ordinary classroom time for up to 16 hours weekly, and classrooms of educative compensation which admit pupils older than 15 years of age, with a curricular difference and with no knowledge of Spanish.

7. Creation of Formation and Labor Insertion Units (UFIL) for students 16 years and older, and the subvention of local nonprofit educative organizations. In 2004, these units incorporated into the European Network of Secondary Opportunity Schools. Students of other cultures in the UFIL make up 14% of their matriculation.

8. Supply of courses for the teaching staff in subjects related to attention to diversity and intercultural education; including, Spanish as a second language, interculturalism, conflict resolution, and development of social abilities.

9. Increase in compensation to schools providing projects which support the suitable social integration of students, such as those who favor the student’s maintenance of the language and culture of origin.

10. Linguistic and cultural maintenance programs through the Ministry of Education and Science.

11. Formation of schools oriented toward migrant families.

12. Extension of the “Open Classrooms” for music, dance, sports, library, and computation that are opened in the afternoons during the school year, and daily at the conclusion of the scholastic year. These are open the neighborhood, contributing to elevate the cultural level of the people and to improve the coexistence of all its neighbors.

13. Development of the program Mus-E in agreement with the Yehudi Menuhim Foundation, which tries to facilitate the coexistence between people who are “different,” and to help them surpass situations of inequality through art, especially that of music and dance.

14. The “Newcomers Program” which includes the creation of a Learning Community for the immigrant pupils who do not know Spanish. In a term of six months, the students have sufficient knowledge of the language and can incorporate into the habitual educative system. In the 2004/2005 course year, there were 190 working learning communities maintained with public funds, which makes up the existence of 2,280 seats and the attention to a greater number of students.