IES Pla d'en Boet 2

...According to Elvira, a lot of children come from rather poor families. The school – respectively the state – supports their education in various ways like offering grants, social support, or a programme for borrowing school-books. At the same time, her experience is that some families do not have the motivation, skills, know-how to go for this support. Many of the parents - who, in their new homes are left without the economical and emotional help of their wider families - work until 8 o’clock and therefore are not able to care enough about their children’s education, everyday problems outside the family. According to Elvira, many children are left alone, especially in terms of their promotion at school as parents are unable to pay attention to their development.
Only one third of parents attend the parent-teacher meetings.There are several schools in Mataró, the IES Pla d’en Boet is attended by a relatively larger number of immigrant children. As it is practically on the outskirts of the town, some children commute to the school from settlements in the neighbourhood.

Immigrant families come to the region especially because of work, but it happens that parents remain without job for a longer period of time. Children’s placement to schools is arranged by the local council, they distribute children registered at the council between schools keeping in mind that the proportion of children of diverse origin should be similar in each school. Newcomer immigrant children attend a “catch-up” class at least for a year to learn Catalan language. Children of Latin-American origin are integrated earlier to normal classes. The integration of Chinese children is the most difficult. According to Elvira, they need at least six years to learn the language.

Out of the thirteen children we chose, one was born in the Dominican Republic, one in Valencia and there were three or four who were born in Mataró but of non-Catalan origin. We did not asked children directly who saw themselves as Catalans, two of them mentioned it spontaneously. Being Catalan is an important element of identity even at this age – much more than data of origin. „I am much more Catalan than Spanish” – told us one of our participants, who proved to be of Andalusian origin, although (partly because of the large number of his hairdresser father) he is deeply integrated to the local community.