Rise of Empires: Spain.

Chapter 201 Compulsory Education and Three Meals a Day

The purpose of Education Minister Gerard Wilson's request to meet with Carlo was not to report on the steady progress of literacy education every year, but to ask Carlo to promote the next step of education reform, which is to implement compulsory primary education in Spain.

Universal literacy education and universal compulsory primary education are two completely different levels of education reform.

The comprehensive literacy education currently implemented in Spain is just a brief training lasting 3 to 5 months, which ensures that the illiterate population can master a certain number of commonly used Spanish words and understand some simple, easy-to-understand knowledge and common sense.

Those who have completed literacy education are essentially still low-educated people, only slightly better than illiterate people.

The universal compulsory primary education that Gerard Wilson wants to promote is to popularize it again on the basis of literacy education, to ensure that all school-age children and young people in Spain can receive compulsory education at least at the primary school level.

Since it is compulsory education, it must be free, which is why Gerard Wilson came to see Carlo.

Judging from the current level of Spanish fiscal investment in education, it would be very difficult to establish compulsory primary education across the country.

Although Spain has a small population, it currently has a population of nearly 1825 million. Although more than 65% of Spaniards have escaped from illiteracy, the vast majority of them have completed this arduous task through literacy education.

In Spain, only about 20% of the population completes primary education, and even fewer, less than 10%, completes secondary education.

This is also one of the important reasons that plague the expansion of Spanish universities and higher education. If there are not enough people receiving primary education, how can higher education get enough students?

This is also the reason why Gerard Wilson insisted on promoting compulsory primary education in Spain. Because more people receive primary and secondary education, more outstanding students will apply for university.

No matter how well-built a university is, or how many laboratories and excellent educational personnel it has, it is useless. Only when there are more students with high school education can the university have enough students to ensure its own income and operation.

"Your Majesty, this is the compulsory primary education development plan formulated by the education department. If the plan can be fully implemented, it will greatly change our educational status quo and allow us to narrow the gap between us and the great powers in education." Education Minister Gerard Wilson once again handed over a development plan for compulsory primary education and introduced it to Carlo.

Carlo took the development plan for compulsory primary education and read it carefully.

The current number of primary schools in Spain is certainly not enough to support the development of compulsory primary education on a national scale. Therefore, before promoting compulsory primary education, the first thing the Ministry of Education needs to do is to build at least thousands of public primary schools and prepare sufficient teaching staff to lay a solid foundation for compulsory primary education.

Even if all of these primary schools were built using a relatively simple method, the total cost of building thousands of schools would be no small sum.

If we add in the teaching staff required for thousands of primary schools, as well as the corresponding textbooks and book materials, this will be a huge expense.

Compulsory education is free, which means that these thousands of primary schools will bring almost no financial return to the government.

Although this is beneficial to Spain's development, it is obviously difficult to expect the government to come up with so much money at once to promote the development of compulsory primary education.

Carlo also understood the reason why Gerard Wilson came to him. It was obvious that he wanted to influence the government through him so that Archduke Serrano, the Prime Minister, and Count Conovas, the Deputy Prime Minister, would agree to the compulsory education development plan.

After all, both of these cabinet government leaders belong to the Conservative Party, and in theory they will definitely obey Carlo's orders.

This was indeed the case at the last cabinet meeting, which is probably why Minister Gerard Wilson submitted the development plan to Carlo first instead of discussing it in the cabinet meeting.

Carlo did not rush to ask about the funding required for compulsory primary education, but instead asked a few questions that interested him: "How does the Ministry of Education plan to implement this plan?"

“Your Majesty, the Ministry of Education is considering giving priority to requiring young people aged 6 to 12 to enter primary school. In accordance with the compulsory education guidelines, the Ministry of Education will waive their tuition fees to ensure that the public is willing to accept the compulsory education regulations.

For teenagers over the age of 12 who have not completed primary education, they are still encouraged to enter primary school, and all primary schools in Spain are not allowed to reject these over-age students.

After completing primary school, graduates can enter a higher level secondary school through a unified examination organized by the government.

If you can get excellent results in the unified examination, the Ministry of Education will waive part of your secondary school tuition and provide a certain amount of scholarship to students with extremely outstanding grades.

If you perform poorly in the unified examination, you will not be eligible for tuition exemption and scholarship, but you can still enter secondary school.

Of course, students who have completed primary education can also enter technical schools for training. Technical schools will receive corresponding subsidies, and the education department will not interfere with their choice.

For some extremely poor families, the education department is considering issuing a certain amount of scholarships in primary schools to ensure that young people from these poor families can complete at least primary school level.

Considering the government's finances, bursaries only exist in primary schools, while scholarships exist from primary school to middle school, high school and university, which is also a reward for students with better academic performance. "Education Secretary Gerard Wilson answered his plan in a clear and coherent manner.

Carlo nodded and continued to ask: "This plan is very good, but there are also several problems at present. Has the education department considered the issue of funding? If compulsory primary education is fully popularized across the country, will the funding of the education department increase several times?
Can our finances support such huge education expenditures? Compulsory primary education takes at least six years to see results, but we need to maintain extremely huge education costs during these six years.

If these problems cannot be solved, I am afraid that Archduke Serrano and Count Canovas will not easily agree to this plan."

The conservative status of Archduke Serrano and Count Canovas is not just talk; they are definitely more conservative than Prime Minister Primo.

Minister Gerard Wilson's compulsory primary education development plan is indeed beneficial to Spain, but it will take at least six years for results to be seen.

However, Spain’s current finances are not that abundant, and each department requires a large financial budget. It is obviously not easy for the education department to get the biggest piece of the pie.

After all, Archduke Serrano, as Prime Minister, and Count Canovas, as Deputy Prime Minister, both hold other cabinet ministerial positions, and they must also consider the development of other departments.

If the education department takes up more of the budget, it means that the budgets of other departments will be much less. The education department will indeed gain great credit for this plan, but it is not certain whether other departments are willing to sacrifice their own interests to help the education department.

Hearing Carlo's question, Gerard Wilson also realized that this was his only chance to persuade Carlo. After thinking about it seriously, he answered:

If all our school construction adopts the lowest level configuration, it can effectively reduce our initial expenses for universal compulsory primary education.

The popularization of compulsory education does not need to be promoted simultaneously across the country. We can select one or two regions as pilot areas to reduce our initial consumption.

If possible, I think Madrid and Catalonia can serve as pilot regions for compulsory education. According to the Ministry of Education's estimate, we only need to build 200 primary schools in these two regions to start promoting the popularization of compulsory education.

If the pilot program is only implemented in these two regions, according to our estimates, the annual increase in education funding can be limited to 1500 million pesetas.

Even if it is implemented nationwide, the additional cost of compulsory education will not exceed 6000 million pesetas. As long as we can stick to it for six years, Spain will be completely different from now.

Your Majesty, with only 1500 million pesetas, the Ministry of Education is confident that it will be able to promote the universalization of compulsory education in Madrid and Catalonia through a pilot program, and set a good example for other regions to achieve the universalization of compulsory education.

Only if we train enough primary school students can we have enough middle school students. Only if we train enough middle school students can we have enough high school students and college students. Now is our best chance, Your Majesty. The Ministry of Education is confident that it will complete this plan and bring you a perfect answer in six years. "Gerald Wilson's words were sincere and he was very confident about the primary school compulsory education development plan formulated by the education department.

This will not only be a great achievement for the education sector, but also an important step for Spain to transform from a weak educational country to a strong educational country.

Carlo had a blank expression on his face, but he was very satisfied with the Minister of Education. In Carlo's opinion, although this compulsory education development plan was not perfect, it was indeed in line with the current situation in Spain.

If this education plan is implemented, Spain will be able to gradually narrow the gap between it and other powers in education in the future.

The importance of education is self-evident. Education can bring in a large number of local talents, which can promote the development of science and technology and all walks of life.

Spain's biggest problem right now is the lack of talent, especially local talent. Education can undoubtedly make up for this shortcoming, although it will take a long time to be effective, but what Spain lacks the least is time.

For Spain, the more important wars were the Spanish-American War at the end of the century and the two world wars that affected the entire world.

Even the Spanish-American War was still more than 20 years away from its historical outbreak. Although the development of the world's situation is not exactly the same as history, Spain has not lacked these years.

What's more, the current Spain is much stronger than the historical Spain. Spain's decline has stopped since the revolution, and its industry, economy and comprehensive national strength have turned from negative to positive and started to grow positively.

Under such circumstances, the United States was not necessarily confident of defeating Spain today. Moreover, the Spanish-American War was more than 20 years later. Carlo was confident that Spain would grow into a powerful country comparable to the five traditional European powers 20 years later, and naturally there was no need to fear the United States at that time.

"As of now, I personally agree with this development plan." Carlo finally smiled and expressed his approval of the compulsory education development plan formulated by the education department. He said: "Education is an important part of Spain's development, and it is necessary to attach importance to education.

Minister Gerard, you can present this plan at the next cabinet meeting, and I will inform Archduke Serrano and Count Canovas to get the government to support this plan."

After hearing Carlo's promise, Minister Gerard Wilson finally breathed a sigh of relief and said excitedly, "Yes, Your Majesty."

At a cabinet meeting a few days later, Minister Gerard Wilson, in accordance with Carlo's instructions, presented this compulsory primary education development plan to the cabinet for discussion.

Because of Carlo's instructions, Count Canovas expressed his agreement, but Archduke Serrano did not express any opinion.

However, the cabinet ministers all knew that Count Canovas's deputy prime minister was actually the most important person in charge of the cabinet government. Although Archduke Serrano was the prime minister, he played a more symbolic and stabilizing role and did not interfere too much in the development of various departments.

After Count Canovas expressed his approval, the other cabinet ministers were no fools either, and they all expressed their approval.

However, although I agree with it, some details of this development plan have also undergone certain modifications.

For example, the original plan was to build at least a thousand primary schools across Spain to meet the school needs for universal compulsory primary education.

After discussions among the cabinet ministers, the plan to build new primary schools was changed to renovating existing buildings as much as possible, such as those owned by rebellious nobles and officials, as well as properties owned by capitalists.

Some of the properties are located in the city, are large and of low value. Although they have been abandoned for a period of time, the overall building can still be used.

With just some renovations, these abandoned properties can be transformed into a new school.

Since primary education is free and compulsory, schools don't need to use brand new houses. Renovation of second-hand houses will also do.

Of course, if the house itself is extremely unsafe, it is naturally impossible to transform it into a school.

The houses that can be renovated and reused must be inspected and ensured to be strong enough. Whether it is comfortable or not is another matter, but it must be strong enough to ensure the safety of teachers and students in the school.

Just in terms of schools, if 100 schools are built less, the education department can save a large amount of education budget, which can be invested in other places to better promote the development of compulsory education.

In addition to saving money on schools, you can also save money on teaching materials and books. Primary school education does not involve too complicated knowledge. The most important thing is to teach the Spanish language course and simple mathematics.

In this case, we can completely abandon the method of each student having a textbook and instead have several students share one textbook.

Even just making sure the teacher has a textbook in hand can promote the teaching of the course. Primary school knowledge is generally not difficult, and because there are only two regular courses, there is plenty of time to teach all students this simple knowledge.

The cost savings on school construction and teaching materials can be invested in other expenses, such as teachers' salaries and meals provided to teachers and students.

Of course, students do not need to be provided with three meals a day for compulsory education. However, according to the current income level of the Spanish people, if these students are not provided with three meals a day, many people will refuse to go to school and let their children go to factories to earn money.

Although there is nothing wrong with doing this for the sake of family life, it would naturally be better if a part of the population could be saved.

It is for this reason that when Carlo saw this plan, he considered providing three meals a day to these compulsory education students in the official name.

Of course, these so-called three meals a day are not that luxurious. They are just to ensure that these growing students can eat enough and not go hungry.

While saving a lot of money on school construction and teaching materials, it is indeed possible to provide these students with three meals a day, so that children from poor families can have enough opportunities to get an education instead of spending the rest of their lives like slaves in dim factories.

In this regard, Carlo considered more. If three meals a day were provided in the name of the government, the royal family would not gain much reputation.

But if it is provided in the name of the royal family, these children will naturally be grateful to the royal family, and their parents will also be grateful to the royal family.

Of course, if the royal family wants to gain such a reputation, it is impossible for them to do so without paying anything. Therefore, at the cabinet meeting, Carlo proposed that the royal family bear part of the cost of the students' three meals a day.

This would save the government some expenses, and officials were naturally happy to do so. Of course, Carlo also put forward his own requirements, that is, three meals a day must be provided in the name of the royal family.

With the agreement of Archduke Serrano and Count Canovas, the proposal was quickly voted through by the cabinet ministers.

The royal family will cover the cost of breakfast and lunch for the students, while the government will cover the cost of dinner. Of course, these three meals a day provided to students for free are provided to students in the name of the royal family, and they will be available every day as long as they are in school.

Since it is provided to all students, the food is naturally not very good. However, Carlo also has a minimum rule for this, that is, the students in the school must eat meat at least once a week, after all, they are in the stage of growing up.

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(End of this chapter)