The educational evening table that Barcelona will launch soon is a new municipal educational and cultural policy to guarantee the right and equal access to extracurricular activities that from Fundesplai We celebrate vigorously. Possibly the context of poverty and generalized crisis in which we are immersed, aggravated by the health emergency, has been the trigger. It is a brave decision and a very important step for the educational leisure sector.
Education doesn’t stop when you leave school. It spans the length and breadth of life, from young to old and in and out of school. This implies rethinking learning environments and a firm commitment to coordinating efforts between all institutions and socio-educational resources.
Educational leisure is part of these learning environments for decades, inside and outside of schools. And he has been claiming his educational role for a long time. Role that, on the other hand, is recognized by international legal standards (United Nations Convention on the Rights of Children) and our country (Statute of Catalonia, Llei d’Infància 14/2010, LEC 12/2009 and Pacte per la Infància of 2013).
Different reports (2014: Síndic de Greuges Catalunya; EU Recommendations: 2013/112/) and studies (2013: Child participation and the construction of citizenship, Novella, A.; Llena, A. and others), contribute very clear evidence on the impact of extracurricular activities on the comprehensive development of children, and confirms what professionals in the field, families and children themselves knew: educational leisure is essential. Participating in these activities contributes to educational success because it reinforces social and emotional and transversal skills; expands educational opportunities, especially for children and youth in vulnerable situations; they are a school of citizenship and participation; antidote against exclusion and contribute significantly to social cohesion; they stimulate creativity and spark new interests and naturally also help to reconcile work and family life.
Historically, education in free time in Catalonia has had the background of esplai centers, caus, sports, cultural, social associations… and has coexisted with a growing offer of very heterogeneous extracurricular proposals, both by the type of activity and by the agent that promotes them.
We think that all leisure models can be valid as long as they are based on the needs of children and adolescents and formally consider a comprehensive and inclusive educational action.
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The educational leisure model proposed by Fundesplai is clearly committed to a humanist education, oriented towards the common good and to act from an ethical perspective in the face of global challenges, as stated the latest UNESCO report ‘The Futures of Education’, that stimulates participation and active citizenship, solidarity, coexistence and sustainability, gender equality and, in general, human values; promotes equal opportunities for children as part of the right to education in free time, guaranteeing access and avoiding the stigmatization of services or the creation of ghettos that would deepen the existing social gap; it is based on the principles of the educating city and cooperation with families, administrations, educational centers and other services and cultural entities; and turns the territory into the protagonist of educational projects for children’s leisure, providing elements of identity and community work and avoiding initiatives that turn the child into a passive consumer.
It will be necessary to ensure that the deployment of these new policies includes at the same level social, economic and educational quality criteria, counting on the leisure entities rooted in the territory and spreading to the rest of the territories.