La expansión de las enseñanzas medias en la España rural. Los colegios libres adoptados (1960-1980)

Abstract

At the beginning of the 1950's, the Spanish education authorities implemented a secondary education lengthening policy, which had the goal of significantly increasing the number of students at secondary schools. They started with measures of limited scope, such as the establishment of evening studies or the so-called "secciones filiales" (private suburban secondary schools subsidized by the Spanish government); yet from the 60's, the authorities tried broader efforts like the extension of the secondary school's network or the implementation of "secciones delegadas" (attached to public secondary schools). From this context, this study tries to analyze the initiative called "colegios libres adoptados" (secondary schools mostly located in rural areas and maintained by the central government and the local town councils), which were created after an intensive collaboration between some town councils and the Spanish government. More than 350 schools of this kind were set up, and they were a fairly efficient way to bring secondary education schools to country areas, thus allowing many students to gain access to secondary education.