The Opus schools decided to keep up with the government and continue segregating by sex. His students are running away

When it came into force in January 2021 the new education lawno one missed that in its provisions there was a direct missile to the waterline of dozens of schools and institutes throughout the country: segregation by sex was prohibited; Only mixed schools could continue to be chartered.

What we discovered a couple of weeks later is that the missile came with a timer.

Five years later, the timer is reaching zero and many centers are preparing to stop being chartered. Immediately afterwards, a wave of students are trying to leave those schools.

What did the law say? The LOMLOE, which is what the law is called, demanded that educational centers that receive public funds “develop the principle of coeducation in all educational stages.” That is, they were prohibited from “not separating students by gender.”

However, as competition is regional and each place has different regulations, many of the attempts to apply this point they have been delayed. In Catalonia, for example, when the ERC department tried to eliminate agreements with differentiated education centers, the courts stopped the measures until the agreements were renewed. That period begins at the beginning of 2026.

And why does it affect Opus Dei? Strictly speaking, talking about “Opus schools” is a bit inaccurate. It is true that there are many centers in that orbit, but the relationships between them are complex and that means that they are not a uniform whole. However, this group of centers (which in Catalonia number a dozen and receive 35 million each year) are the spearhead of the “anti-coeducational” movement.

Thus, many Catalan schools linked to the Prelature are doing the math. Continuing to be concerted would mean losing one of its hallmarks; Not losing it means becoming private (with the increase in fees that this entails).

For this reason, the steps they were taking in two schools in the Sant Cugat/Bellaterra area (La Vall – for girls – and La Farga – for boys) were seen as the great privatization experiment. The area is one of the richest and most exclusive in all of Catalonia and, in that sense, it seemed logical to think that they would be two of the schools that would suffer the least from the jump.

But the flight of students has begun. El País requested in July (through a complaint to the Commission for Guarantees of Access to Public Information) the data from the official pre-registration process and what these data show is a complete leak. 63 students from La Vall and 96 students from La Farga tried to go to other schools. Finally, only 38 of the first and 74 of the second achieved it; but it is a warning to sailors.

Applications for admission also decreased (between 10 and 14%). All this, while a group of families try not to abandon the concert.

However, the decision seems firm. Last week, two schools in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat also linked to the Prelature (Xaloc – for boys – and Pineda – for girls) announced that they were going to begin preparing for a more than possible non-renewal of the agreement and the problems that this will entail.

According to data from El Paísonly those two schools (with more than 2,800 students) receive seven million euros from the Generalitat.

And what situation does all this leave us in? In recent years, the debate about whether single-sex or mixed education it has become more intense. In fact, in some countries like the US, differentiated education It has been experiencing a real boom for a decade.

However, the current conversation makes it clear that research on the topic is the least of it. The opposing positions at an ideological, economic and social level They make these investigations become ammunition with which to attack the opponent.

For this reason, what everyone in the sector is wondering is how long the legislature will last and what will happen if, eventually, a government of the opposite direction arrives. Meanwhile, what is clear is that differentiated education is going to verify, for the first time in many years, the commitment of its families to the project.

Image| Vazovsky

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