Educating Cities Faced with School Segregation: Walking Towards Sustainable Development

Abstract

The basic task of the administrations and the political class in general is to improve the quality of life of citizens. With regard to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4, administrations must ensure inclusive, equitable and quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. One of the problems, that most affects to equal opportunities and the well-being of citizens, is school segregation. This article aims to describe the causes and effects of school segregation in the 21 educational cities of Spain from the perspective of municipal technicians and techniques that have participated in this study, offering proposals that redefine the problem in order to tackle it in a sustainable way. The approach used is descriptive-interpretative and the instruments deployed were an initial online questionnaire and written records derived from the implementation of the World Café. The analytical procedure consisted of ordering and making sense of the information through a categorical analysis.. The results addressed that the causes explaining school segregation, defined by the technicians, are closely related to socioeconomic, socio-cultural and housing factors (urban planning, family residence, income, family cultural level, proximity of the school), ethnic-cultural aspects (national origin, the tendency to group together due to community affinity) and education policy (treatment of the different educational networks, distribution of schools, functioning of schools, addressing diversity, equality of the education system, etc.). The sustainable approach to this problem requires the development of transversal policies, a high level of coordination between the various administrations (state, regional and local) and the responsibility and involvement of the political class.