Rise of Empires: Spain.

Chapter 356 Nine-Year Compulsory Education
The industrial sector acted quickly and soon came up with a complete shipbuilding industry integration plan, which was voted through in the cabinet government.

After the vote, the finance department allocated funds to the industrial department to support the shipbuilding industry, and Spain officially began to rectify its domestic shipbuilding industry.

The purpose of industry integration is to cultivate some powerful monopoly enterprises, but such plans cannot be made public.

Because to some extent, cultivating monopolistic enterprises is also the extinction of these small businesses, which is bound to cause dissatisfaction among these small business owners.

But there is no way around it. Small businesses do not have much impact on the country. Only medium and large enterprises with a certain scale have a certain value to the country.

For the sake of national interests, the interests of these small shipyards can be abandoned. Of course, during the process of shipyard integration, the industrial sector will also pay close attention to the trends of these small shipyards.

The shipyard workers will be properly resettled and will not lose their jobs due to the merger and integration of their companies.

The shareholders of the integrated shipyards will also receive due compensation in accordance with the market value. Apart from the integration and merger of their own enterprises, they do not seem to have suffered any major losses.

During the shipbuilding industry rectification process, other departments also provided auxiliary roles.

In order to train more and better shipbuilding workers for Spain's shipbuilding industry, the education department has specially opened several technical training schools related to the shipbuilding industry and reached cooperation with several major shipyards in Spain.

Speaking of technical training for workers, this type of technical school is currently widely popular in Spain.

Spain's education system has two parallel tracks, providing good career paths for both cultural education and technical education.

Throughout the primary education stage, Spanish education focuses on teaching basic knowledge, and the knowledge taught is relatively simple language, mathematics and history knowledge.

After entering the six-year secondary school stage, students are stratified, with better students moving on to middle and high school, with the goal of improving their academic credentials and eventually becoming prestigious university students.

Another group of students who are not very interested in learning or have poor academic performance can also enter various types of technical training schools.

These technical training schools have basically reached cooperation with local factories and enterprises, and students can basically be assigned jobs after successfully graduating from technical schools.

It is worth mentioning that these students who successfully graduate from technical schools often have higher incomes than those with junior high school and high school education.

Unless these students are able to get into college, their income will never be as high as that of technical students in the initial stages of employment.

Although Spain's per capita annual income is only 229.14 pesetas, the actual annual income of workers is close to 260 pesetas.

These skilled workers who graduated from technical schools have higher incomes than ordinary workers, generally close to 270 pesetas.

After working for a few years and becoming skilled workers, their income is generally over 300 pesetas.

Spain's per capita annual income has increased precisely because of the continuous expansion of the workforce, and it is increasing at a faster rate every year.

Because Spain’s education system has implemented a dual-track education system, the education department’s financial budget has always been relatively high among all departments, only lower than the most important defense department.

In 1890, the Spanish government's total fiscal expenditure reached 12.021 billion pesetas, of which 3.35 million pesetas were military expenditures, accounting for 27.87% of Spain's total annual fiscal expenditure.

The education sector's financial budget is second only to military spending, reaching 1.92 million pesetas, accounting for 15.97% of the Spanish government's total annual fiscal expenditure.

The industrial sector ranks third, with a fiscal budget of 1.87 million pesetas, accounting for 15.5% of the Spanish government's total annual fiscal expenditure.

This also shows the importance the Spanish government places on education. The voice of the Minister of Education has never been lower than that of important cabinet ministers such as Industry and Agriculture.

With such a huge investment in education, Spain's educational environment has also improved greatly compared to 20 years ago.

When Carlo just became the King of Spain, the illiteracy rate in Spain was close to 70%. The vast majority of people in the country were illiterate, and most of the non-illiterate population had only primary school education.

Twenty years later, at the end of 20, the illiteracy rate in Spain had dropped to about 1890%, partly due to the elderly who could no longer receive education and partly due to children under the age of six.

The Spanish government has made primary education compulsory for all children aged 6 and over, except for those who are too young or too old, and encourages them to pursue higher education at the junior and senior high school levels.

Among the nearly 85% of the non-illiterate population, 48.7% have only primary school education, 37.6% have junior high school or secondary technical school education, 12.9% have high school or higher technical school education, and only 0.08% have college education or above.

It can also be seen from this data that Spain’s biggest problem at present is the insufficient number of people receiving higher education.

But there is no way around it. After all, the prerequisite for applying to university is to have a high school diploma, and the prerequisite for entering high school is to have a junior high school diploma.

The good news is that the population in Spain with secondary school education currently exceeds half of the non-illiterate population, which also means that the number of college students in Spain will increase in the future.

In the first 10 years of Carlo's reign as King of Spain, Spain produced less than 7000 college students each year.

In the past 10 years, the number of college graduates from all universities in Spain has exceeded 1.4 each year, more than twice the previous number.

If this trend continues, perhaps by 1900 the number of college students in Spain would have doubled, and the number of people receiving junior high and high school education would have increased by more than half.

Under the premise of universalizing six-year compulsory primary education across the country, some legislators have begun to discuss nine-year compulsory education.

The nine-year compulsory education is actually the addition of compulsory junior high school education to primary school. The government will bear all tuition fees for students in primary and junior high school, accelerating the popularization of secondary education in Spain.

This is certainly a good thing for education, but perhaps not for Spain's finances.

The education department also discussed the pros and cons of nine-year compulsory education. In the end, Education Secretary Alan Carleton was shocked by the huge educational expenses brought about by nine-year compulsory education, and then decisively gave up the idea of ​​nine-year compulsory education temporarily.

If nine-year compulsory education is to be universalized, the financial budget of the education department must be raised to the same level as military spending.

Although Spain's finances are still good, it is still a big problem for the Spanish government to bear such a large financial expenditure at once. Education Minister Alan Carlton was about to give up, but after hearing the education department's idea of ​​nine-year compulsory education, Carlo finally decided to support the education department and let Spain enter a new educational milestone.

Of course, it is unrealistic to implement nine-year compulsory education all over the country at once. On the one hand, the government cannot support such a huge expenditure, and on the other hand, the education department is not ready to fully popularize nine-year compulsory education.

After comprehensive consideration, Carlo decided to carry out a pilot project in the two major cities of Madrid and Barcelona, ​​and implement nine years of compulsory education regionally to see the results.

Although the populations of these two cities are also large, the financial pressure will be greatly reduced compared to the universal nine-year compulsory education across the country.

On December 1890, 12, Education Minister Alan Carleton submitted a new plan report to Carlo on the pilot implementation of nine-year compulsory education, detailing the benefits of implementing nine-year compulsory education in the two cities and what expenses the education department should bear.

The cost of nine-year compulsory education is indeed not small. Even if it is only implemented in the two cities of Madrid and Barcelona, ​​the financial funding of the education department will need to be increased to 2000 million pesetas.

However, all this spending will not be in vain, because according to the report of the Minister of Education, Alan Carlton, after three years, when the first batch of junior high school students of the nine-year compulsory education graduate, the population of junior high school graduates in Madrid and Barcelona will increase by more than 10% each year.

Technical secondary education is also counted as part of the nine years of compulsory education, and even if only half of students choose technical schools, Madrid and Barcelona will have thousands more reliable skilled workers every year.

These are just two cities. If the nine-year compulsory education is extended to the whole of Spain, Spain will be able to add nearly 100,000 excellent workers every year.

This is a huge milestone for the education sector and also a huge breakthrough and progress for the industry.

After these skilled workers who have learned the system enter the workplace, they can effectively improve the technical level of Spanish workers. The higher the level of the workers, the higher the income they can naturally get.

In this way, the popularization of nine-year compulsory education will not only change the current situation of education, but also change the current situation of industry and Spain's economy.

Apart from the fact that the government's pockets will be thinner, there seems to be no other disadvantages.

After Carlo confirmed that there were no problems with the nine-year compulsory education pilot implementation plan, he asked Education Secretary Alan Carleton to submit the plan to the cabinet government for a vote and then allocate funds for its implementation.

The cabinet government vote was also quickly passed, and there was no need for Prime Minister Canovas or other cabinet ministers to oppose the plan that Carlo clearly supported.

What's more, if this nine-year compulsory education pilot program can be successful, it will indeed be a huge step forward for Spain.

Why do Carlo and the cabinet ministers believe so much in the changes that compulsory education will bring?
This brings us to the important results of Spain's compulsory primary education. Because the government bears all tuition fees for primary school, the cost of students' primary school study has been reduced by half.

Almost all school-age children in Spain attend compulsory primary education, and the enrollment rate of school-age children reaches a terrifying 97.3%.

Except for children with congenital defects, almost all children can enjoy free primary education. Even those extremely poor families can apply for additional education subsidies.

For those families that are truly poor and cannot afford student expenses even after tuition is waived, the Spanish government will fully bear all expenses for students in primary school, including tuition, meals, accommodation, etc.

For most families who are in poverty but not that poor, they can also apply for scholarships specially set up by the royal family.

The application for a scholarship is slightly easier than the former, and there are a certain number of places available for application every year.

In addition to scholarships, there are also scholarships at various stages of primary school, junior high school, high school and university that are specifically set aside to reward students with good character and academic performance.

Grants are specifically for poor students, while scholarships are for all students with good academic performance. Of course, if you are a poor student with good academic performance, you can enjoy both grants and scholarships.

Carlo spends tens of millions of pesetas on scholarships and grants every year, and currently millions of students have received scholarships or grants from the royal family.

There is no doubt that this is Carlo's way of winning the hearts of the people.

A considerable portion of the income earned by the royal family's enterprises will be returned to the people. Whether it is subsidies for the poor or scholarships for poor students, this is a little kindness that Carlo has done for all the people of Spain.

Such efforts are also very rewarding. Even though many people know that the royal family is rich enough to rival a country, they do not have the slightest jealousy towards the royal family.

After all, the royal family spends a huge amount of money on subsidies to the poor every year, and that money really flows into the pockets of the poor.

Carlo is very strict in controlling the subsidies for the poor. No deduction is allowed at any stage and the subsidies must be fully distributed to the poor.

Regarding this, Carlo also specifically instructed the Spanish performance evaluation department. As long as the withholding of subsidies for the poor was discovered, the local government officials would not be evaluated for excellence that year, and basically ended up with poor results.

After receiving a bad performance evaluation, local officials should forget about getting promoted in a short period of time. It would be quite good enough if they could keep their official positions.

Regarding the nine-year compulsory education that is being implemented on a pilot basis, Carlo gave the task to Education Secretary Alan Carleton.

If nine-year compulsory education is well implemented in the two cities of Madrid and Barcelona and achieves quite good results, Carlo will consider implementing nine-year compulsory education on a full scale in a few years.

As the Education Secretary who proposed and implemented nine years of compulsory education, Alan Carleton naturally also achieved considerable political achievements.

Thanks to his achievements in implementing nine-year compulsory education, it will not be difficult for Alan Carlton to obtain a knighthood in the future.

Because it would take several years to see results from the implementation of nine-year compulsory education, Carlo also directly promised Alan Carleton that he would continue to serve as Secretary of Education in the next cabinet government until the results of nine-year compulsory education were achieved.

If the implementation of nine-year compulsory education goes well, Alan Carlton will have the hope of making further progress in the cabinet.

In any case, the cabinet government will undergo major changes in the next term, and Prime Minister Canovas, who is already in his 60s, is destined to withdraw from the political stage.

By then, Carlo would not mind giving capable people more room for advancement. The Spanish government still needs more fresh blood, which will not only bring more vitality to the Spanish government, but also make it more pioneering rather than conservative.

(End of this chapter)