Calpe Town Council has sent a letter signed by the Councillor for Education, Mariola Mulet, requesting that the Regional Ministry of Education halt the dismantling of the ten prefabricated classrooms located at IES Ifach and guarantee their maintenance throughout the 2025-2026 academic year. The letter warns that the removal of these modules, eight of which are used daily as classrooms, would have a ‘very negative’ impact on the normal functioning of the school and on the quality of education.
The council points out that, despite the opening of IES Les Salines, IES Ifach continues to experience high enrolment pressure in the morning, with figures similar to those that led to the granting of these prefabricated classrooms at the time. In addition, Basic Vocational Training courses continue to be taught in the afternoon due to a lack of available classrooms, even though pedagogically they should be taught in the morning. For this reason, the Council has informed the Regional Ministry of its opposition to the removal of the prefabricated classrooms during the current academic year until a definitive solution to the space problems has been found.
The school's teaching staff have already expressed their opposition to the dismantling of the classrooms, arguing that they have not yet received a detailed work plan or safety protocol to protect the educational community, which occupies the premises continuously between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. The school's management has also warned that the material resulting from the dismantling could remain stored within the school's facilities, with the consequent increase in risk to students and staff, as well as a reduction in available space.
The City Council supports these concerns and stresses that, to date, there is no plan in place to ensure that the dismantling is compatible with the normal running of classes, nor is there a plan for the immediate removal of the dismantled material. Furthermore, it points out that “the centre has invested in recent years in improving the facilities of these prefabricated classrooms, such as network cabling and electrical connections, so removing them now would be ‘an unjustified waste of public resources”.
Likewise, the Department of Education indicates that if intervention is considered essential, a work plan, with a schedule and safety and emergency protocol, should be sent in writing to the centre and the City Council in advance. In addition, it demands that any dismantling work be carried out outside school hours and preferably after the end of the school year in June in order to avoid ‘relocations of groups, organisational disruptions and unnecessary risks for students and staff’. The council also requests that the immediate removal of dismantled material from inside the centre be guaranteed, without indefinite periods of storage in accessible areas, and that the conditions under which such removal will be carried out be detailed.