Rise of Empires: Spain.

Chapter 162 Education Reform
Facts have proved that Prime Minister Primo dared to put forward such an exaggerated five-year development plan goal after practical considerations and adequate preparations.

The Spanish government's total fiscal expenditure in 1873 was as high as 7.433 million pesetas. Since the Spanish Revolution, the Spanish government has not faced such high fiscal expenditure.

But compared with this year's total fiscal budget, 7.433 million pesetas is not a big number.

Because this year, the government's total fiscal budget is as high as 8.972 million pesetas, an increase of more than 1.5 million over last year.

Such a sufficient fiscal budget did instantly resolve the concerns of the cabinet ministers, and also allowed the ministers of the second cabinet government to maintain sufficient expectations for the completion of the second five-year development plan.

At the insistence of Prime Minister Primo, the House of Representatives quickly passed the 1874 fiscal budget submitted by the cabinet government. However, this did not quell the discussion about the fiscal budget among the people. After all, such high fiscal expenditure was almost twice the annual fiscal expenditure during the first five-year plan period.

For the Spanish government, this is definitely a big gamble. If this fiscal expenditure of nearly 9 million pesetas can really bring more returns, then the public will naturally applaud.

But if the fiscal expenditure of nearly 9 million pesetas fails to achieve any good results, various doubts will arise about Prime Minister Primo.

What is the confidence behind Prime Minister Primo's aggressive expansion of the government's fiscal budget?

Of course, it is the various enterprises and equipment purchased at low prices from various countries, including the technical information, production data and technical workers with production experience owned by these enterprises.

Although the Spanish government is openly recruiting outstanding engineers and scientific researchers, it is also secretly absorbing employees of the purchased companies to come to Spain.

One or two skilled workers may not play a big role, but what if there are hundreds or even thousands of them? These skilled workers concentrated in any factory can effectively improve the production experience and productivity of the factory.

For some existing factories in Spain, what they lack most at present are workers with production experience and excellent technical capabilities.

In order to attract these excellent skilled workers, Spain has offered very generous conditions, such as providing free housing for these skilled workers and their families for three years, providing new jobs with higher incomes than their original jobs, and ensuring their families' medical and educational conditions.

Such conditions are already attractive under normal circumstances, let alone when all countries are mired in the quagmire of economic crisis.

Faced with Spain's high-profile policy of attracting talent, perhaps the country that feels the most uncomfortable is Spain's neighbor Portugal.

Because talents from other countries have to consider the issue of language communication, Portuguese people basically don't have to consider it. Portuguese and Spanish can have brief exchanges, and Portuguese people have no problem understanding Spanish.

These two languages ​​are more like dialects from two nearby regions in later generations. There are slight differences between them, but they do not affect the communication and exchanges between them.

Although Portugal was not greatly affected by the economic crisis, it depends on who you compare it with. Spain was not affected by the economic crisis in other aspects except imports and exports.

On the contrary, due to various construction and development activities in Spain, the number of unemployed people is not only decreasing, but there are also many positions with relatively high incomes that are in urgent need of experienced employees.

In 1873 alone, the total number of people attracted by Spain from Portugal was close to 1. In addition to a small number of scientific research talents and senior engineers, the other several thousand people were workers and other talents with certain technical capabilities.

As long as the economic crisis continues, Spain will continue to absorb population from Portugal. This is of course a good thing for Spain, but not so good for Portugal.

However, the Portuguese government has no solution for the time being. After all, although Spain's actions may seem like adding insult to injury, they do not violate the laws of any country.

Of course, in this era, laws cannot constrain any country. Only strong power can do that. All other treaties and laws are just empty talk.

Last year, Spain did not spend much on attracting talent and purchasing foreign companies, spending only 1.306 million pesetas.

Of course, the main reason for this is that the economic crisis broke out in the middle of the year, and the time actually used to purchase companies and attract talent was less than half a year.

This also means that 1874 will be an extremely important year. This is the second year after the economic crisis, and it is also a complete year. The government must complete the corporate purchase plan formulated last year and absorb enough technical talents, senior engineers and scientific researchers.

If another year passes, all countries will have a certain degree of control over the economic crisis, and it will not be so easy to buy companies or absorb talent.

That is why the budget for this year's so-called external actions is as high as 2.7 million pesetas. If combined with last year's budget, the total cost of purchasing companies and attracting talents will exceed 4 million pesetas, of which about 3 million pesetas will be spent on purchasing companies and about 1 million pesetas will be spent on attracting talents, which is not much different from the previous estimate.

The next step is to tinker with technical talents and try to attract relevant scientific research talents. Because of the uncertainty of talent vacancies and the possibility that other countries will enact laws to prevent talent acquisition actions like Spain, there is no specific budget for this action, and everything must be judged based on the situation at the time.

Even if the 2.7 million pesetas budget for foreign operations is deducted, the Spanish government's total fiscal budget this year is still as high as 7.272 million pesetas.

Due to the large expansion of the army, Spain's military expenditure was still the largest part of its fiscal expenditure. In 1874, the Spanish Ministry of Defense's fiscal budget was as high as 1.973 million pesetas, accounting for 27.1% of the total fiscal budget.

The second is investment in industrial construction. Even without considering the cost of purchasing enterprises and recruiting talents, the budget of the industrial sector is still as high as 1.457 million pesetas, which is exactly one-fifth of fiscal expenditure.

As a newly established cabinet department, the transportation department has the third largest financial budget among all cabinet departments, with a total budget of nearly 1.3 million pesetas.

After all, the plan is to build more than 3500 kilometers of railways and a large number of roads, and other departments have no objection to giving such a large financial budget to the transportation department.

Building 3500 kilometers of railways alone is enough to give people a headache, not to mention that the transportation department is also responsible for the construction of roads, as well as the construction of train stations, the deployment of train routes, the transportation of materials, etc.

The first year of a new department's life is a tough test, but if it passes it will be one of the most rewarding of any cabinet department.

In the future, the people's livelihood department, public security department, education department, medical department and agricultural department will each have their own financial budget, and the total scale will definitely be much larger than in previous years.

The diplomatic department is relatively independent and has a large financial budget. After all, the diplomatic department needs to maintain diplomatic embassies in various countries and conduct some diplomatic activities, etc. Insufficient funds will face great problems.

Prime Minister Primo must have reported such a huge financial budget to Carlo. Considering that the temple treasure did bring a lot of confidence to the government, Carlo agreed to the financial budget report.

After all, with the temple treasure, the Spanish government can at least issue several billion pesetas. Although the fiscal expenditure of nearly 9 million pesetas seems exaggerated, the Currency Issuing Committee had previously planned to issue more pesetas.

This seemingly exaggerated fiscal expenditure is actually just to circulate these newly issued pesetas into the market in a reasonable way.

However, Carlo did not do nothing. At Carlo's suggestion, Prime Minister Primo appropriately increased the financial budget for the education department to help the education department better popularize literacy education and promote higher-level education.

Before Carlo ascended the throne, the illiteracy rate in Spain was as high as 70%, making it a similarly disadvantaged country to Italy.

After five years of development, Spain's illiteracy rate has been effectively reduced. According to statistics from the Spanish government, in the past five years, the number of people in Spain who have received literacy education has reached nearly 400 million, with an average of more than 80 people receiving literacy education from the government every year.

Especially after Carlo decided to provide a free lunch to all those who received literacy education, more people participated in literacy education. At present, the illiteracy rate in Spain has been reduced to below 45%. It took only five years to achieve such an achievement, and the education department has indeed made great contributions.

But the illiteracy rate of 45% still could not meet Carlo's expectations. The reason why Carlo asked Prime Minister Primo to increase the financial budget of the education sector was to completely reduce Spain's illiteracy rate to below 20% by the time the second five-year plan was completed.

You know, Spain also has many elderly and disabled people who are not suitable for education. Considering the existence of these people, the illiteracy rate of 20% is actually a very low level.

On this basis, vigorously developing middle and high school education and enacting a series of policies to reduce or exempt tuition and miscellaneous fees for higher education will be an effective way to cultivate local talents for Spain.

Talking about the issue of training college students before the illiteracy rate is thoroughly reduced will not actually solve the fundamental problem.

After all, the prerequisite for having enough college students is to have enough high school students, and the prerequisite for having enough high school students is to have enough middle school students.

This is why it is important to lay a solid foundation. Only after we have built a good primary education can we pursue higher-level middle school and high school education.

Only when the education of middle schools and high schools is well built can we seek more college students. If the goal is only set on the development of universities and the training of college students, Spain's education will ultimately be a castle in the air.

After all, when most people are illiterate, how can we ensure that Spain can produce enough outstanding college students every year?
Not long after the fiscal budget was passed by the House of Representatives, Spain's new Minister of Education, Gerard Wilson, personally met with Carlo and reported on the specific development goals of the education department's five-year development plan.

Reporting the current situation and plans of the Ministry of Education to Carlo was a decision made by Education Secretary Gerard Wilson after much consideration.

Gerard Wilson was actually a Liberal Party member. Because of his rich qualifications in education and some of his ideas on education reform, he won the favor of Prime Minister Primo, which led to him becoming the Minister of Education in Prime Minister Primo's cabinet.

Originally, Gerard Wilson only wanted to carry out his own education reform in the Ministry of Education, but after learning that part of the credit for the Ministry of Education's high budget came from Carlo's request, he knew that he could not remain indifferent.

After all, Carlo is the King of Spain, and even Prime Minister Primo has to show enough respect to him, let alone a newly promoted Minister of Education.

"Your Majesty." When asking for an audience with Carlo, Gerard Wilson kept his attitude very low, without any airs of a cabinet member.

"Minister Gerard, I'm very happy to see you become the Minister of Education. I believe that under your leadership, the education department will achieve greater success." Carlo nodded calmly and motioned Gerard Wilson to sit on the sofa next to him.

The biggest reason why the previous Education Minister was not re-elected in the second cabinet government was that he did not have any outstanding achievements in education.

The fact that Gerard Wilson, a non-Progressive Party member who advocates education reform, can become a cabinet minister also proves that Prime Minister Primo attaches great importance to education reform.

After all, Spain's existing education system is still too outdated and is clearly not well adapted to the new-style education of European powers.

Even though many countries have already popularized compulsory education, Spain has not even completely reduced its illiteracy rate, which is why Prime Minister Primo is anxious.

"Thank you for your trust, Your Majesty. I will definitely summarize the shortcomings of the education department of the previous government, create a better educational environment for all Spaniards, and change the current educational situation in Spain." Gerard Wilson was not overly modest, because sometimes modesty is not a good thing.

Carlo nodded and began his test: "Minister Gerard, does the education department have any new ideas about the direction and focus of future education reform?"

Gerard Wilson did not rush to answer Carlo's question, but thought carefully for a while, organized his words in his mind, and then replied respectfully: "Your Majesty, I think it is very necessary for Spain to carry out educational reform.

I have been studying in Germany for a while. The Germans attach great importance to education, which is unmatched by any other country. The Germans' formal law on compulsory education originated from the "Rural Education Regulations" promulgated by the Kingdom of Prussia in 1763, but their compulsory education actually started a hundred years earlier.

I think that the reason why the Germans defeated the Austrians and the French successively, in addition to their powerful army and excellent military technology, was that they promoted the popularization of compulsory education at an early stage.

The illiteracy rate in the entire German region is the lowest among all European regions, which shows how much importance the Germans attach to education.

Therefore, I think that education is an indispensable part of Spain's development. Even if we cannot establish a compulsory education system like Germany, we must enact some policies to reduce the burden of education on the people.

Only when more and more people receive education can more and more talents be cultivated. The improvement that talents bring to the country and society is obvious. The talents brought by education will make the country stronger and stronger, which cannot be compared with absorbing talents from foreign countries.

This is consistent with the direction of Spain's education reform. I believe that the primary goals should be placed on basic education and technical education.

In terms of basic education, I believe that basic compulsory education should be universalized throughout the country to ensure that all Spaniards can receive about two years of basic education and reduce Spain's illiteracy rate at the root.

The two-year basic education period is only temporary. When the government budget is sufficient in the future, I think the basic education period should be extended to the entire primary school stage, which is about six years.

Only when we ensure that all Spaniards complete about six years of primary education can our education reform be considered to have achieved initial success and produce visible results.

The second is about technical education. Technical education is mainly aimed at our adults, with the aim of cultivating enough technical talents for Spain.

It takes a long time to cultivate a talent from infancy, but our country now lacks a large number of technical talents.

To address such issues, I think it is necessary to build more technical schools to help more ordinary workers receive technical training and enable them to grow into technical workers.

This will not only solve our problem of technical talent shortage, but also effectively increase the wages and income of these people.

In response to the shortage of high-level technical talents, I think we can also implement a dual-track education system to cultivate our outstanding technical talents from an early age.

The idea of ​​the dual-track education system is as follows:

In the more conventional track, students can complete regular education from elementary school to middle school, high school and then to university, and the college students finally trained are the high-level talents we lack.

The other track is that after completing basic education or primary education, students can choose to receive basic technical education and advanced technical education, and ultimately cultivate the high-level technical talents that we lack.

In order to provide more opportunities for these technical talents, students who are undergoing basic technical education and advanced technical education can also pass exams to enter high school or university and eventually return to the first-track education system.

Your Majesty, this is the direction of Spanish education reform that I have conceived, as well as some key points of Spain's future education reform." Gerard Wilson explained his goals and plans for education reform to Carlo one by one with a respectful but confident look.

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