Acting in Concert?
An essay on Spain's charter schools
"Colegio Público Santa Teresa (Cádiz, España) - P1560394" by El Pantera is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel often asks people: “What important truth do very few people agree with you on?” He thinks the founders of startups should always have a clear answer. Trying to answer the question is harder than you might expect. I already gave one answer in a previous essay on scapegoats. Today’s essay will give an answer about Spanish society.
Before we get stuck in, though, I must warn those readers based in Spain that you might hate the theme of this week’s essay. Please re-read Thiel’s question to see why. The idea is to find an idea that “very few people” would agree with me. Ready to disagree? Here’s my answer: I think that too many middle-class families in Spain waste money on private schools that only have a slight edge over the state system.
Let’s look at some statistics. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) collects data on private spending on education in its members states. The average is 0.13% of gross domestic product (GDP). The number in Spain is above average, with 0.16%, which is tied with the UK.
Although Spain and the UK are in a tie, the dynamics in both countries are very different. Only 7% of school children are privately educated in the UK, which goes up to 18% above the age of 16. The UK has a small number of very expensive schools, often called public schools (rather confusingly). The annual fees at Eton go up to to £52,749 per year, for example, which is a staggering amount when you think that the average income in UK to £34,963 per year. Most of these very expensive schools are clearly for the children of the elite, not the middle class.
Meanwhile, in Spain, around 30% of children are privately educated - more than four times as many as in the UK. Many of these children go to charter schools (escuelas concertadas in Spanish and escoles concertades in Catalan). These are private institutions that operate with public funds and are aimed solidly at middle-class families. The average price ranges from €680 to €860 per student per year, but this includes some families that pay nothing. Many families pay more.
While it is great that middle-class people want to give their kids a good education, I think that charter schools aren’t necessarily the best use of families’ hard-earned cash. The one possible exception involves upwardly mobile parents who didn’t go to university themselves but want some support so their kids can become first-generation professionals.
In other cases, saving the average price of €680 per year from three to 18 would generate more than €10,000, which could easily pay for a decent master’s degree. Saving the average price of €860 per year would yield almost €13,000. In either case, you could get a little more bang for you buck if you invested the money sensibly to get a little interest on top.
Let’s imagine a typical Spanish middle-class family. Both parents went to university and both earn the average salary for graduates of about €28,000 each. They have two kids. If they spend €680 per child on charter schools that are only slightly better than the local state school, it is more than 4% of their net income. This is a lot of money! It probably involves a certain amount of sacrifice. Shouldn’t the family make it count?
Once your kids have grown up, nobody will care very much which school they went to. However, having a masters degree would definitely give them an edge. On average, people with masters degrees earn more than €35,000 in Spain, compared to just under €28,000 for those with a first degree - a difference of more than 26%. Over a lifetime, that can make an enormous difference. It could amount to €280,000 over 40 years. This is a return of 28x on an investment of €10,000.
Of course, in an increasingly digital world, the higher the education level, the easier it is to create value for others. This is particularly true of post-graduate degrees in technically challenging subjects. On the whole, I think parents should encourage their kids to aim as high as possible when it comes to education and worry less about the quality of the lower steps on the ladder.
If, instead of a masters degree, parents use the money saved as the deposit on a small one-bedroom flat or studio apartment instead, it will also make a huge difference. The young people who are able to do this will gain quickly equity on their investment, which will make it easier to trade up to larger properties in time. Being able to live mortgage-free by the time they retire is a very realistic goal, even though house prices in Spain have soared in recent decades.
Another alternative is to give your kids the option of going to one of Spain’s private universities instead of a state one. Saving €13,000 and getting a little interest on top could easily pay for nearly half a degree at a private university, assuming you live in a major city and your kid can live at home while at college. The main advantage of private universities is that they offer a broader range of subjects, which makes them good options for professionally focused degrees.
Do you hate me yet, gentle reader?
A lot of Spanish readers will probably be shouting at their screens that going to a state school will make it harder for kids to go to university. I think this is a valid point for working-class kids. However, I strongly disagree when it comes to the kids of middle-class parents, assuming at least one parent has a university degree.
Let me digress a little. For my sins, I belong to a few expat groups on social media. There is always a little anxiety among parents who are moving to Madrid or Barcelona for work. If the expat’s company pays for one of the very over-priced international schools, then that is a fine option. However, this is the exception rather than the rule. My advice is always the same: middle-class kids without learning disabilities who were born in Spain or moved here before the age of (say) ten should be perfectly able to get a university place after going to state school.
I have backed this opinion with some skin in the game. One of my daughters moved to Barcelona just before the age of three and the other was born here. Both went to local state schools. Both got into university.
It is true that the high-school dropout rate in Spain is a major problem. Around 28% of Spaniards leave school without completing the baccalaureate (sixth form) or getting a vocational certificate, according to the OECD. This is more than double the European Union’s (EU) average of 12% and much worse than second-placed Italy (23%). However, research shows that the risks soar for kids from low-income families.
Middle-class kids do, of course, sometimes lose interest in school, do badly and fail the odd subject. However, parental expectations are a powerful lever. Getting a tutor can help a lot when a kid is struggling. Having a few books in the house and discussing the opportunities that a good education can bring over the dinner table will both help too. Talking about the correlation between heavy cannabis usage at a young age and school failure is essential too. Setting a good example, by improving your own skills in your spare time, is also recommended.
Some middle-class Spanish parents are worried about contagion from troubled kids if their precious babies are exposed to people from less privileged backgrounds. I’m not so sure myself. I went to a big comprehensive (state high school) in the UK that was so bad it eventually got bulldozed. It sat between the local university and a large council estate (public housing). Pretty much all the lecturers’ children (including me and my brothers and many of our mates) ended up at university, while pretty much all the kids from the estate left as soon as possible.
Even at a young age, I could see that parental expectations and family norms had a strong gravitational pull. I later found out research overwhelmingly shows that educational attainment is positively correlated with parents’ education levels and socioeconomic status. Anyone who wants to review the literature should start here.
Over the years, a couple of school friends from working-class backgrounds have told me that making friends with middle-class kids at school was a game-changer for them. Their friends’ parents would ask them what they wanted to study at university and what they wanted to be when they grew up. These interactions were very different from what they had experienced at home; and opened a door to a new world. So, yes, there is a little contagion, but it doesn’t necessarily go in the direction that middle-class Spanish parents might expect.
Some parents might be worried about the risks of bullying and violence in state schools. Having gone to a moderately rough comprehensive in the UK in the 1980s, where it wasn’t uncommon for working-class boys to go straight into the army after school, I can only say I was pleasantly surprised by how few fist-fights our daughters saw on the playground in the state schools in Barcelona and its outskirts they attended in the 21st century.
I got an insight into how middle-class Catalan parents have abandoned state schools a couple of months ago. Both my daughters did the artistic baccalaureate at a high school in central Barcelona. They both met many artistically minded kids from a wide range of backgrounds. The high school also ran a scientific baccalaureate. At my youngest’s graduation ceremony, I don’t think I saw a single native Catalan kid receiving a scientific baccalaureate certificate. The newly qualified (and upwardly mobile) kids were mainly Muslims, with many Latin Americans too.
The middle-class Spaniards who send their own kids to charter schools are in for a surprise when they find out what the talent of the future looks like. By abandoning state schools in city centres, they are missing a sneak peak into the future. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but the entry of immigrants and their kids into Spain’s middle class is likely to be one of the biggest stories in the country during the 2020s and 2030s (alongside the energy transition).
On a related note, being regularly exposed to kids from under-privileged backgrounds should help middle-class children develop virtues like gratitude and sympathy for those who are struggling in life. People who spend their childhood in a bubble with others from similar backgrounds are probably more likely to be vulnerable to narratives that demonise some members of society as they get older.
When people in Madrid find out that my wife and I sent our kids to state schools in Barcelona and its outskirts, they always ask about Catalan-nationalist indoctrination. In my experience, the main sins are those of omission - there is little mention of the Spanish Constitution in any of the textbooks.
Some of the teachers (particularly those of the Catalan language) are enthusiastic supporters of independence, but their attempts at indoctrination tend to be a little amateurish. Teenagers are notoriously rebellious. I have sometimes been surprised by the extent of the backlash against the Catalan language from Spanish-speaking kids. Opinion polls show that Catalan youngsters are wildly uninterested in independence compared to older generations. If there is indoctrination, it doesn’t work very well!
Having said that, the worst aspect of the Catalan school system is its shockingly high dropout rate. Working-class children from Spanish-speaking homes, who have to receive nearly all their education in the region’s minority language, tend to do much worse than their peers in other regions. At the same time, middle-class kids tend to find a way into higher education, no matter what language they speak at home.
OPOL
Some readers will probably say that I am writing this column from a privileged position as a native speaker of English. My wife and I adopted the “one person, one language” (OPOL) model - I always speak to our kids in English and my wife always speaks to them in Spanish. They learnt Catalan at school. Our kids have grown up to be completely bilingual, with good Catalan. It is true that we have never had to spend a cent on English classes. It is also true that many charter schools sell allegedly good English-language classes as one of the main benefits.
However, I remain unconvinced that escuelas concertadas are the best route up the mountain. How many kids from charter schools end up speaking genuinely good English? Parents of younger children should ask to meet some of the older kids at a charter school and try and have a conversation with them in English before committing their hard-earned cash. Although I’m not sure what the best alternative would be for Spanish parents who want their kids to speak good English, I think the best answers will include the word “immersion” probably near the word “summer;” as well as “daily practice.”
Regular readers will have heard me talk about cognitive dissonance many times on this blog. As you will remember, it is an uncomfortable feeling we all get when faced with contradiction. The best way of making cognitive dissonance go away is to double down on your starting position while rejecting the new information and the person who provided it. If you are a a university-educated Spanish parent who is spending serious money on a charter school, I can guarantee you are experiencing cognitive dissonance now. This is a great moment for some introspection. Study your irritation!
Of course, it is hard to change horses in midstream. Pulling your kids out of a charter school would be a drastic response to this column. Please mull over the ideas I have discussed today. Consider it food for thought. There is no great rush: you can always try to convince your own kids to commit to the state system when they start a family of their own.
Finally, it remains to be seen if this column will lose as many readers as the one where I said that living in a house in the countryside is worse for the environment than living in a city-centre flat. Hopefully, the result won’t be as extreme as when British chef Jamie Oliver included chorizo (sausages) in his recipe for paella (a Spanish rice dish). He was sent multiple death threats over several weeks.
Despite the risks, the comments are open. Please tell me why I’m wrong (preferably without any threats)! I’d also love to hear your own most controversial opinion and how you are backing it with skin in the game. See you next week!
Previously on Sharpen Your Axe
My column on Thiel’s contrarianism and scapegoats
My controversial column on the countryside
Further Reading
Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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An interesting take on the state versus "concertado" choice, but I see two main faults in your argument.
One is the cost-benefit analysis, the opportunity cost calculations you go into when weighing up the investment in a private/concertado eduction. I don't think most parents are thinking in those terms at all - they want what they perceive to be best for their children at any cost (that they can manage). The outcomes you describe - having more money after x years as opposed to a certain types of eduction for your child - are not directly comprable.
The other fault is the notion that mixing it up in state schools will lead to better outcomes. While that may be true in the most general sense, for some of the reasons you describe, when individual middle class parents are weighing their choices, there is no non-monetary incentive for them to be pioneers on that front. From their individual point of view, they are taking a risk with their child's education that they can afford to avoid.
I am admittedly not an expert on this. But anecdotally, seeing how they are taking schooling decisions in my partner's extended family, they are moving the kids from state to concertados whenever possible. The most recent is a teenager, who seems to be more motivated and engaged than before. But this isn't your middle class sample group. This is a struggling immigrant family that is looking to give to the children something the parents don't have - a first-rate formal education.
Hi Rupert! Perhaps not as controversial a take as you predicted, I didn’t find anything particularly enraging, in fact we agree on most of it. You’re right that English instruction is hopeless everywhere and even concertadas that make a big thing of their English are hardly ever any better. I’ve lost count of the many worksheets my daughter has brought home which have actual errors in them, and the teachers themselves have a very poor level in most cases. And the Catalan indoctrination thing is, as you say, not such a big deal these days.
On the rest, I would make a few observations. Firstly those numbers…680-860 per year? I’m not sure where that comes from. I’d estimate concertada fees as usually roughly between 150-400 per month depending on the school (plus food and other things on top). That probably strengthens your argument about how much can be saved by not going though!
But I don’t think most families make the choice based on a rational economic calculation about future value in the job market, or university funds, etc. My daughter has just made the jump from primary to secondary, so I spent all last year talking with other families at the school about the various pros and cons of our options. What families talk about is the educational philosophy and style of a school - old-skool homework/testing/pressure versus student-led/relaxed. Some like one style and some like another, and there was also a bit of peer-pressure (at least where I live) to support free public education in principle and not appear elitist.
However I still picked up the vibe that what really mattered to families was choosing their kids’ peers, even though this was rarely stated outright. It’s not so much about joining the elite as avoiding the really problematic kids who come from chaotic homes and can be very disruptive to learning and the school environment. Those kids are predominantly in public schools, because that’s the default option. Families who can afford a concertada might figure that it’s worth it to avoid those kids, even though they justify their choice by talking about educational standards. I think that you’re right that the middle-class kids will probably be fine in the end wherever they go to school, but families are not only thinking of the long-term outcome, they’re taking into account the actual experience at school.
Most concertadas aren’t particularly elite anyway, most are pretty diverse, as you say, there are lots of immigrant families who have big aspirations for their first-generation kids. For those who really do want to join the elite there are the fully private and international schools, with their Range Rover families, ski trips and eye-watering fees which make concertadas look very cheap by comparison!
There is also the question of values and culture. Concertadas get some public funding but they’re privately run so they have a bit more scope to develop an individual school culture, and of course many are religious. Public schools are far more similar to each other and adhere more closely to whatever the current cultural fad coming out of the Department de Educació is. The Catalan independence stuff has waned in the last few years but has been replaced by some extreme gender policies that I (and many feminist organisations) find pretty alarming. That’s one reason that I (a lifelong atheist with Richard Dawkins first editions on the bookshelf) ended up choosing a Catholic concertada for my daughter. Something I thought I would never do but here we are!