Promoting Educational Inclusion Through Local Governance—A Case Study in Spain

Abstract

Within the framework of the research project “What are we forgetting in inclusive education? In participatory research in Galicia (PID2019-108775RB-C4)”, we developed a proposal that, based on the inclusion and community perspective, investigates the relationship between municipal corporations and educational centres for the design and implementation of the programmes that was municipally developed to promote educational inclusion. The role of municipalities as promoters of inclusion through educational programmes is analysed, focusing on the mediation of third-sector institutions. It also studies the demands of the agents that comprise a community perspective on inclusion. The qualitative–interpretative methodology is based on SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) and CAME (correct, adapt, maintain and explore) techniques to contrast the congruence of existing initiatives with the needs of the educational community, synthesising information from 39 interviews. The results show deficient channelling of the schools’ demands into municipal programmes, which are mostly planned in collaboration with third-sector entities, without the participation of the school community. It is concluded that this demand for greater participation and collaboration is one of the main demands of the school community to promote inclusion at the local level.

1. Introduction

Spain is characterised in its educational and political landscape by the succession of educational laws defined by the established political power as a means of ideological imposition against the political opposition. This has been a key aspect that has marked the future of Spanish education and, therefore, the future of inclusive education in schools [1].

Furthermore, the decentralised nature of Spanish education, which confers decision-making powers and autonomy on the different autonomous communities that comprise the country, generates an educational landscape characterised by differences in school practises. For this reason, the autonomy of schools and their relationship with the environment, as established by Aguilar-Hernández et al. [2] and García-Medina et al. [3], are key aspects for the development of quality education, thus making the community role in education inseparable. This is necessary to avoid a policy that is far removed from the reality of the classrooms, in which there is no connection between what the regulations establish and what really happens in the day-to-day life of schools and the environment that surrounds them.

The proximity of local authorities to citizens shows its importance, even more so in a globalising world, regarding developing contextualised, participatory and truly democratic actions [3]. The need to refocus on the optimisation of community support for inclusion, claiming the potential of municipal policies in this respect, makes it necessary to share the view of people or groups with special educational needs with those who can contribute to alleviating these needs [4]. Understanding educational inclusion from the perspective of a community approach that integrates professionals in this field requires incorporating various professional perspectives and acknowledging the internal diversity present within each of the different groups. These perspectives include the management of schools and the teaching staff as a whole (in various professional roles, such as tutors, specialists in Therapeutic Pedagogy, who work directly with students with specific educational support needs (NEAE), and specialists in Hearing and Speech, focused on assisting students with difficulties related to oral and written language, communication and hearing), along with families of children living in vulnerable situations (due to multiple causes), third-sector organisations (which regularly collaborate in the implementation of educational programmes) and political representatives in the educational field (with clear regulatory powers to define their role as promoters of school inclusion). We therefore share [5] (p. 105) the need to “think about individual differences as legitimate characteristics of society, not as excluding and categorical characteristics”, which is a basic idea for a conception of inclusion that involves all the aforementioned actors, in congruence with a global and structurally planned conception.

Specifically, we analyse the municipal educational programmes in three Galician municipalities that maintain a continuous tradition of offering an inclusive perspective, contrasting it with the perspective on inclusion expressed by the education councils, in the words of the most senior municipal politicians in charge of this area and how this is reflected in these programmes. In a second dimension of analysis, from the review of the demands and with a transversal approach, we contrast the perceptions of the role of municipalities in promoting inclusion in Galicia. To gain a clearer perspective, the questions were structured around key dimensions such as participation, representation, satisfaction/quality, school choice, financial costs/investment and non-educational spaces.

Benjamin Barber, one of the most prominent theorists in the defence of political–social organisations at the local level, states that real democracy is to be found in cities, not so much in nation-states [6]. At the end of the 20th century, the importance of the local level in facing the processes of social globalisation was strongly debated [7]. Under the famous phrase “think globally, act locally”, emphasis was placed on the need for context to mitigate the possible inequalities of more “generalist” policies. Local governments are closer to the needs of the people, and at the same time, the people are closer to the governing bodies to which they can hold them accountable. Local governments can design specific strategies that are very close to the counties and their problems, which is why they can adapt more quickly to social changes that are increasingly rapid [8].

Within the local territory, schools serve as a centre of gravitation for the relationship between the community and the new generations, with indirect implications for families. Schools are a community link that can help to develop the feeling of “feeling part of” an inclusive vision of collaboration to solve different problems of coexistence [9]. In schools, we find a small community where the different community–school and community–local participants are represented and where the mere curriculum is transcended to broaden the possibilities of community intervention for inclusion. The community approach proposes a school that is part of a broader context and, contrary to the institutional approach, which distances itself from the social situation surrounding the school (health cuts, unemployment, economic vulnerability, social inequalities, etc.), is concerned with the social problems of its environment, contributing as an essential agent to addressing social inequity or situations of inequality existing within it [5,10]. The operation of projects from a community perspective creates school–community connections to address inequalities. For this reason, some countries have already established, in a prescriptive way, that the school must be connected to the community and that this can be carried out through different models [11,12,13,14]. In the words of Darretxe-Urrutxi, Alvarez-Rementería, Alonso-Sáez and Beloki-Arizti, “a policy commitment is needed at international, national and local levels to make further progress in the face of this challenge in order to continue moving forward on this journey towards a more inclusive and equitable education, and society” [15] (p. 16).

Local education policy can play an essential role as a driving force between the needs of the school and the society in which it is immersed. The potential of this relationship is highlighted if priority is given to the need to create an educational proposal that generates an inclusive community through the participation of various proposals that can be generated by the school councils of educational centres.

This approach, in which the community is an important part of decision-making in its schools, considers the context of the schools and local authorities as a fundamental part of their development; it is a model that exists and, with the specific logic of each case, is carried out in different countries such as Finland, Sweden, Poland, Denmark, Norway or the United Kingdom [16,17,18].

In the specific case of Finland, it is possible to appreciate the importance given to the local situation at the time of establishing curricular intentions, with the contribution of the municipalities in basic education being fundamental, both organisationally and in terms of curricular concreteness. This shows how the role of the municipality can increase the quality of education. Finland has a decentralised education system in which municipalities have high decision-making power. The local administration of education is the responsibility of municipal authorities or associations of municipalities. The Finnish education system is characterised by a vision of education at the national level, which is, in turn, interconnected with the local level, based on consultation and debate between the two [19].

Based on evidence from educational research, the Finnish National Council has set directions for education policy, creating a “national curriculum” that sets out general guidelines but does not prescribe them in detail. At the same time, planning is established at the municipal level through dialogue with schools, which participate in setting the objectives to be followed based on the general lines set out in the national curriculum and their vision at the local level [19].

In the Spanish case, local action has been limited to school councils since 1985 through Organic Law 8/1985 of 3 July 1985, regulating the Right to Education (LODE). This law was much discussed by those social sectors that saw the policies of participation of the different members of the educational community and excessive democratic openness, which clashed with the dictatorial ideology from which Spanish society had just emerged after the dictatorship and which did not look favourably on the new proposals for democratic government in schools [20]. Subsequently, in 1995, the LOPEG (Law on Participation, Evaluation and Governance of Educational Centres) was passed, adding to the competences of the School Council that draws up and approves the School Education Project. This meant there was a close relationship between the local community and the schools.

It should be noted that, with the advent of parliamentary and representative democracy, decentralisation has meant that the central government has established educational and legislative bases so that autonomous communities can exercise their subsequent autonomy in decision-making in education, but this has not been sufficient to facilitate the participation of municipalities in education [21], which has been rather rare in recent years due to aspects such as the limitations they face in the political sphere [22,23]. Currently, to achieve equitable education in which all citizens participate on equal terms and throughout their lives, local councils must participate through the Municipal Education Services (EMS), increasing those councils that want to participate in developing education policies [23].

As stated by the president of the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces, the role played by local councils is fundamental in matters such as “Municipalities are involved in schooling, in participation processes, in school support programmes within the school timetable, in extracurricular activities; we promote and support programmes complementary to the formal system of adult education and early childhood education; we support and invest in infrastructure, in conservation and maintenance and the development of the best possible network of centres, among many other issues” [24] (pp. 1–3).

This is not possible because, although the law clearly establishes the competences of local councils in education, they are discredited and stripped of their functions, partly due to the lack of funding and the limitations they suffer from developing their own capacities [25]. This can be clearly seen in how the voice of local councils is limited in the School Council, with their representatives only making decisions on infrastructure, repairs, construction, etc., and how there are no adequate communication channels for creating necessary services for the community. The research questions investigate whether the role of local councils in the School Council facilitates inclusive community participation through the educational programmes they implement in their municipalities, whether these programmes are discussed in the School Councils, whether they are developed in parallel with the functioning of schools, and so on. These are the main issues explored in this article, which lead to the following main objective: to analyse how municipal corporations, in collaboration with educational centres and third-sector institutions, design and implement educational programmes that promote inclusion, considering the demands of the community agents involved.

2. Materials and Methods

This text originates from a National Research Plan project: What are we forgetting in inclusive education? This participatory research seeks answers to exclusion and inequality in education (MISS-EQUITY Project, 2020–2023). It studies and interprets the main policies and practises of school inclusion in four autonomous communities (Galicia, Cantabria, Andalusia and Murcia) from multiple perspectives. Our specific work is framed within coordinated research. What are we forgetting in inclusive education? The participatory research in Galicia (PID2019-108775RB-C41; MISS-EQUITY, 2020-2023) was specifically limited to the Galician territory.

This is a qualitative, exploratory and interpretative study [26]. It takes into account the importance of integrating diverse voices since [5] we start from a community vision of the school “where the function of support is immersed in any educational sector or group, understanding and assuming support as a function inherent to the development of the school, without locating it in certain people or a specific sector or directed only at people with specific characteristics or specific contexts of intervention”. Hence, integrating diverse personal and professional perspectives of the school community constitutes a specific requirement of the research that nourishes this proposal and, therefore, is a starting point of reference in methodological planning.

This methodological planning is based on a review of municipal educational programmes aimed at preschool and primary education that promote inclusion, which is analysed together with interviews carried out with politicians with the greatest responsibility at the local level (councillors for education in the metropolitan area of A Coruña and its neighbouring areas of Cambre and Culleredo) and 39 semistructured, in-depth interviews with various members of the school community (head teachers, teachers, families and associations). To validate the qualitative research conducted, the 32 items from the Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Studies (COREQ 32) checklist were considered, which is included as Supplementary Materials. To evaluate the role of the municipalities as promoters of school inclusion, their commitment to curriculum development, the functioning of the channelling of demands from schools to the municipalities, and the extent to which the demands emanating from the schools are received and attended to.

2.1. Participants

The context of the sample revolves around three municipalities in Galicia (A Coruña, Cambre and Culleredo). In these three municipalities, we focus on the field of basic education, i.e., preschool and primary education. However, the target sample is not the students in school but rather some people or educational programmes related to this basic education: (a) education councillors of the municipalities of A Coruña, Cambre and Culleredo (see

Table 1. Councillors for Education and Educational Programmes aimed at Infant and Primary Education in the municipalities of A Coruña, Cambre and Culleredo.

City Council			Programmes
A Coruña	Department of Education, Historical Memory, Innovation, Industry and Employment	- Man - 30 years of experience - Primary Education Civil Servant Specialities: Music, Primary Education and Social Sciences - Education Positions: Teacher, Head of Studies and Director - Political party PSOE (Left)	Programmes within A Coruña de Aventura Mathematical Rebumbio Mathematical Fair Science Day in the street A Coruña Cultural Programmes A Coruña Participates Programmes Seed A Coruña Afternoons Programmes The best game strategy The empire of the cloud and the hidden avatar: advantages and risks associated with using the Internet. First aid in the centre Faster, taller, stronger Programmes A Coruña and consumption Children know the street Fine or flower Rolling through our history Safe school routes ANCAS. A Coruña Ambiental Programmes A Coruña in Equality Programmes
Culleredo	Citizen Participation, Education and Rural Environment Area	- Woman - 3 years of experience - Baccalaureate - Administrative - Political party PSOE (Left)	Civic and constitutional education Education for public safety Emotional education for conflict prevention Media education Education for heritage and historical education Education for the promotion of reading and writing Music and art education Environmental education Education for coexistence. Municipal plan against school absenteeism. Health education Diversity and gender Community revitalisation
Cambre	Department of Education and Health	- Man - 3 years of experience - Training in collection management and technical solvency in IT management and advanced IT. - Administrative - Unión por Cambre political party	Christmas programme Playing at the Christmas Programme Carnival Games and Workshops Programme Easter Week Workshops Programme Urban Summer Camp Programme for the maintenance of educational centres After-school activities programme Municipal subsidy programmes “School for Families” Programme “Educate by Playing” Programme Christmas programmes Programmes of other entities Programmes of other councils

Source: own elaboration.

) who are responsible for the design, development and evaluation of educational programmes; (b) educational programmes that are carried out in these municipalities and that are oriented towards early childhood and primary education (see Table 1); and (c) members of the school community, such as headmasters/headmistresses, teachers, families and associations. In the case of the selection of participants, this corresponded to a nonprobabilistic purposive sample. The number of participants was determined in relation to discursive saturation.

2.2. Instrument and Procedeure

Instruments were designed to help us relate school inclusion competences to the context and identities of the participants [27]; therefore, on the one hand, participants were interviewed through a series of semi-structured in-depth interviews. This type of instrument constitutes a method in which participants can reconstruct their realities orally, including their behaviours and emotions [28]. To have a clearer perspective, the questions/items revolve around the following dimensions: participation, representation, satisfaction/quality, choice of school, costs/financial investment and noneducational spaces. For this purpose, 18 questions were developed and adapted to the group being interviewed. Immediately after each interview, I wrote field notes not only to record forms of nonverbal communication [27] but also to record my own impressions after the interactions with the participants, sharing with Ángeles Parrilla [29] (p. 111) “the clear need to include subjectivity in any research process that aims to understand a social reality”.

The selection of informants was carried out through the search and identification of key informants, who were also representative of the various agents of the school community interviewed, ensuring territorial representation of the four Galician provinces and considering the presence of rural areas.

The interviews were conducted face-to-face, lasted approximately 1 h and were audio-recorded and transcribed. As part of the ethical procedures, consent was requested, informing participants of the objectives of the study and the potential risks and benefits of their participation throughout the process and ensuring their confidentiality and anonymity. Participants were contacted by the author through an invitation email indicating that their participation would be voluntary.

The educational programmes presented in this study were selected for the study. After contacting the councillor responsible for education in the administration, we visited the websites of each municipality participating in the study and compiled the programmes so that once the interview was completed, we could corroborate whether the information compiled on the programmes was real.

On the other hand, this article uses SWOT and CAME (see

Table 2. Analysis technique.

SWOT		CAME
S	Strengths	C	Correct
W	Weaknesses	A	Adapt
O	Opportunities	M	Maintain
T	Threats	E	Explore

Source: [28].

). The SWOT is an evaluative and diagnostic technique that, from strategic planning in developing action projects, allows a proactive interpretation to emerge from the most relevant results collected through the research process [30,31,32]. Its specific use lies in the detection of strengths and weaknesses of municipal programmes aimed at inclusion, thus studying strengths and weaknesses in their approach, combining this information with the challenges that could arise from their implementation, both in order to detect opportunities that may arise throughout the process, as well as possible threats to be faced. The CAME technique (Correcting Weaknesses, Addressing Threats, Maintaining Strengths and Exploiting Opportunities) was selected for its prospective and synthetic potential, with the added argument of its complementarity to the SWOT analysis [32,33]. The SWOT analysis allows us to make proposals in the same dimensions, focusing precisely on the present and future aspects detected in the internal and external analyses of the SWOT but with the incorporation of more voices. We use this approach, from a more generic approach, to channel the main demands that the group of people consulted highlight with regard to relations between educational centres and inclusive municipal actions aimed at the school population.

2.3. Data Analysis

The data analyses are presented in two distinct phases. In each of the phases, we carried out analysis processes divided into two coding cycles according to the recommendations of Seidman [28]:

• Phase 1. Analysis of the local socioeducational programmes implemented in three municipalities in the region of A Coruña (Cambre, Culleredo and A Coruña) through SWOT and CAME analysis. At the same time, we analysed the in-depth interviews conducted with the Education Councillors of these municipalities. Therefore, in this first phase, the existing educational programmes are contrasted with the perspective of the highest local authority in the respective municipalities and, therefore, those most responsible for the design, development and evaluation of the programmes, such as the three councillors for education who are responsible for school inclusion.
• Phase 2. Based on the school’s perspective as a community, the results are complemented with references derived from in-depth interviews with other key agents in the educational community for inclusion. The people who participated were selected for their involvement in inclusion from the respective collectives in which they participated. From these interviews, generic reflections on inclusion were selected, specifically focused on the object of study, i.e., the contribution of municipalities to the promotion of educational inclusion. From these collectives, we focus, in this work, especially on demands that, contrasted with the results extracted in Phase 1, allow us to present strategic lines oriented towards improvement through the CAME analysis and have the potential to represent key ideas.

The qualitative analysis of the interviews in both phases was carried out with the support of the MAXQDA programme in its 2022 version. It was also used to elaborate graphical representations that visually support the results presented. For this analysis, the system of codes used is very important, as it has focused on the analysis of the demands and proposals emanating from the groups interviewed, respectively, in the subcodes relating to political–administrative (1.1) and social (1.5) barriers, on the one hand, and in the proposals on educational policy (3.1) together with the so-called social (3.5, aimed at promoting improvements of a social nature) (see Figure 1).

3. Results

With the results presented from a study focused on the local educational reality, an attempt is made to understand the planning process and execution of municipal public policies that take the form of programmes for inclusion. Based on the conviction of the need to implement a community approach to promote educational inclusion, the aim is to determine to what extent there is fluid and effective communication between educational centres and municipal corporations, as well as with other agents involved, and whether municipalities have sufficient capacity to address the issues that are in demand of them.

The SWOT and CAME techniques form the basis of the structure that will guide the organisation of this section, accompanied in both phases by verbatim quotations from the interviews, selected for their potential to exemplify the main findings highlighted.

Through the results presented below, we identify causes and effects based on the approaches addressed: first, from the analysis of inclusive municipal educational programmes through a SWOT analysis, which includes the results of the review, in terms of inclusion, of the socioeducational programmes implemented throughout the 2021–2022 academic year in the municipalities of A Coruña, Cambre and Culleredo, in contrast with the perspectives from the perspective of municipal policy on the form and content of these proposals, insofar as they respond more or less effectively to the needs claimed from the school.

The SWOT analysis synthesises the results obtained in the first phase of the proposal. It seeks to identify the congruence between intentions and actions, paying specific attention to the relationship and participation of schools in the design of inclusive programmes offered by the municipality. The main results from the conversations with politicians and the review of municipal programmes aimed at including preschool and primary school pupils in the three selected municipalities are presented below.

First, following the acronyms that identify the technique, we will begin by identifying the elements highlighted in the internal analysis of the educational programmes, integrating (sometimes literally) the political voices to highlight the results extracted (we will not indicate any express reference in each quote collected, as they all belong to the same category of analysis). In this way, we can position the following WEAKNESSES based on the study of municipal programmes and the opinions of political representatives:

W.1. The majority of educational programmes are promoted by municipalities based on agreements with third-sector organisations, without the direct participation of schools in the configuration of this offer. Mostly based on stable agreements, these are programmes in which the inclusive perspective is present, sometimes even as a central objective (“with COGAMI, for example, we are working on inclusive playgrounds in schools, which is a project in which we are also going to make the playgrounds inclusive […], in other words, less cement, less football pitches and much more recreational places”), as is the case with entities expressly mentioned by political representatives such as COGAMI (Galician Confederation of People with Disabilities), ANHIDACORUÑA (adults, children and families affected by ADHD), Down Galicia, ASPACE (movement to help people with cerebral palsy and other related disabilities and their families), or the Meniños Foundation (a nonprofit social action organisation specialising in the protection of children and adolescents). The weakness derives from the fact that the educational centres are absent in this process, and the current mechanisms to promote their effective participation are insufficient, not their participation, as the school councils fulfil this function. We will see in the second phase of the analysis that this issue plays a central role in the demands of the teaching staff as a whole, irrespective of the professional position they hold in the school. Along the same lines, it should be noted that these are often stable proposals that are not necessarily re-evaluated before being implemented throughout each school year so that their funding is maintained by the councils without considering the real needs of the schools “because they work”; however, this means, for example, that the profiles of pupils and specific needs existing in the municipality, which vary from one year to the next, especially those profiles with more specific needs, are not properly addressed.

W.2. In connection with the previous idea, it is necessary to rethink and modify the configuration of the role of the school councils so that the proposals formulated in the meetings transcend an assistance-type dynamic and their effective functioning to establish mechanisms that can translate the proposals derived, for example, into municipal educational programmes. Current legislation, as argued in the theoretical framework, is a good support; the problem is how to develop it. A good start would be for each person who participates in the Council to exercise the competences that are actually recognised. This should be the case since they are a representation of the student families, which channel their demands to the School Councils through the management teams without regular direct communication with families about educational needs, as one councillor clearly indicates in the following quote: “All of this is settled there, in the centre. In other words, families who do not have a say in an association of student families, directly turn to the school management […] that a bus stop does not have to be here... it is listened to, but in the end, I will always call the school and I will resolve it with the management […] before it reaches us it is already a school proposal through the School Council”.

W.3. There is no community perspective on promoting educational inclusion, which should be inclusive by definition and whose shortcomings are particularly evident in the relationship between schools and municipal policies with similar aims. In this context, the school seems to play a technical teaching role, while municipalities and the third sector have a predominant role, both in design and execution, in the development of municipal educational programmes, knowing the importance of those analysed in promoting values of coexistence, equality and tolerance. In this way, the integrated approach of the various agents that must combine their actions to promote inclusion is blurred.

With regard to the THREATS, understood as those elements that hinder educational inclusion through municipal educational programmes, we can highlight the following:

T.1. With the exception of actions linked to solving emergencies or developing infrastructural improvements, difficulties are perceived in effectively attending to the demands of schools. Bearing in mind that channels already exist but that their functioning is not adequate, as is the case, to cite a few examples, with the School Council, the associations of headmasters/headmistresses or the confederations, federations and associations of parents and parents of students in special education centres. The channels of communication between the school community and the local councils throughout the school year only seem to be effective in relation to work and infrastructure maintenance, as one councillor pointed out when he acknowledged that “perhaps we remain very much in the day-to-day, in the problems of the school, in the technical problems of the school, or…Deficits of the centre”. This aspect is a conditioning factor for the funds available, year after year, sometimes taking up a large part of the annual budget. All the actors accept this as normal, more because of the urgency and somewhat out of habit, although it would be interesting to open a social and political debate on the role of local councils in educational policies so that they have the resources to tackle the initiatives that are normatively presupposed for them.

T.2. The apparently scarce formal coordination between the various municipal areas, as manifested in educational inclusion programmes developed by other municipal areas such as welfare, inclusion, sports or culture (in their various denominations and groupings, depending on each municipality), can give rise to various difficulties: bureaucratic-administrative and operational, hindering fluidity in the relationship with educational centres, as there are different people and approaches at the municipal level; at the level of efficiency and effectiveness, with overlaps between programmes with similar characteristics and other areas not working or with a reduced offer (for example, a stable programme is detected in areas such as equality or a shortage in programmes promoting inclusion).

T.3. The intention to promote inclusion, evident in the intentions of the political representatives and the coordinating departments, may not be adequately translated into educational programmes, as it is an indirect or nonexplicit repercussion of some characteristics of most programmes. They are not planned to take into account the specific needs of people and/or groups in greater situations of vulnerability beyond specific aspects in specific programmes such as the reduction in enrolment fees (“all activities are designed for all types of disabled pupils”), which is largely conditioned by the limitations of resources, in the knowledge of other efficiency issues derived from improvements in coordination. Particularly in smaller municipalities, the limited scope for local authorities to develop a network of programmes that, in form and content, meet the needs of the community is impossible. In addition, there are sometimes various motivations from municipal management that sometimes go beyond being purely educational, such as with regard to the dissemination achieved by some programmes: “this is the third year we have done it, we were in the press the other day”, which may result in inclusivity not being the central focus of the intentionality of some of the proposals but rather a greater media impact.

At an internal and positive level of analysis, we find STRENGTHS, which are aspects to be highlighted for their potential to promote educational inclusion from municipal educational programmes:

S.1. The wide diversity of existing programmes of an educational nature, covering various departments and councils, with special attention being given, in addition to the education department, to the Social Welfare Department. Having a wide range of programmes on offer, as is the case in the municipalities mentioned above, is of great value and demonstrates the interest shown in this area by the local councils. Stability is another noteworthy characteristic, as there are programmes offered annually by the municipalities, which means important advantages in terms of family organisation, complementary activities to curricular development to be taken into account by teachers, organisational purposes in terms of funding, etc.

S.2. The willingness of those in charge of education at the highest level of municipal management to collaborate beyond the duties set out in the regulations, showing interest in promoting inclusion and in the perspectives that come from the educational centres: “I always trust the guidance department and the teaching staff of the centre, they are the ones who are there on a day-to-day basis, with the children”. Furthermore, there is a clear conviction that the evaluation of the functioning of programmes is fundamental to consolidating those programmes that have a real impact on improving the living conditions of citizens, even when the numbers (for example, of users or associated costs) are not the most profitable at a quantitative or electoral level.

OPPORTUNITIES identifies possible lines of improvement in the implementation of educational programmes in municipalities, taking into account their current development and the contextual and structural factors that could be optimised.

O.1. The participation of school representatives in the implementation of programmes favours their good reception and development, which is why it should be a common objective of the educational community as a whole to optimise the channels of communication, especially by passing on to municipal educational programmes the school demands that arrive through the legally established channels. When the representation of schools through the School Council is properly channelled, the foundations are laid for them to be well received by families, which could be exemplified in proposals such as the following, with a clear inclusive purpose aimed at developing reading and writing with dogs. Arranged with a third sector entity, it is clearly aimed at inclusion and with remarkable results: “with children who are perhaps a little behind in reading or even in communication […] the children improve a lot […] I wanted to thank the Council for this activity, because my daughter... She almost did not speak, and now…” (political representative). In addition, coordination with the relevant school departments is also well planned, as, for example, in the identification of target groups “only and exclusively chosen by the guidance department, we offer the activity, they eh… choose the children”.

O.2. Promotion of interdepartmental work to mainstream inclusion through the provision of educational programmes. Although it requires improvements in its practical implementation, the intention to give a global vision to inclusion from the municipal level, giving it a transversal approach in municipal policies, is also a strength: “we start from an idea, from a global idea of the city in which all areas of the City Council are involved, from education to urban planning, environment, social welfare, etc.”. We mentioned earlier the threat of an apparent lack of coordination between the different areas, which is visible in specific aspects such as the absence of programmes offered jointly by different departments, although it is worth highlighting the existence of meetings, conversations and agreements on municipal actions in the area of inclusion, as well as particular conceptions that are quite close to what should be.

O.3. Building on existing proposals to place greater emphasis on inclusion. A significant proportion of the programmes analysed are carefully designed and educationally beneficial for preschool and primary school pupils, so they are a good basis for introducing improvements that exploit their inclusive potential to the full. Both proposals derived from third-sector entities and financed—or co-financed—by the municipality, as well as those developed by the local authority itself—sometimes allow improvements to be made to optimise their benefits. A significant example that connects with the understanding of what inclusion is—and knowing the difficulties of putting into practice ideas that on paper are much more easily realised—would be to extend the programmes to all pupils—or failing that—to the greatest possible number and situations of diversity—trying to make all the activities of each programme accessible to all children and adolescents.

Taking into account the issues raised in the SWOT analysis, we then present the CAME analysis with a prospective intention and integrate the rest of the interviews. This polyphonic vision is based on a search for improvement proposals from a community school approach, where in addition to the municipal corporations, “professionals and agents involved in each educational institution (advisors, internal support teachers, tutors, management team, students, families) learn and work together to solve the difficulties that arise in their educational and social context” ([5] p. 94), giving rise to contextualising the duty to be of the municipal contribution to school inclusion. In a more detailed way and by integrating textual quotations from the interviews, the following lines of work to promote interinstitutional collaboration between schools and municipal corporations should be noted. More specifically, we assess the demands that can be materialised in municipal educational programmes that promote educational inclusion based on the perceptions of the various groups in the educational community with whom interviews were conducted (teachers—tutors, guidance counsellors or specialists—management teams, families and third sector entities).

First, there are many references and ideas aimed at CORRECTING the weaknesses detected in municipal inclusive programmes for preschool and primary school pupils:

C.1. Considering the role that third-sector companies play in providing educational programmes, it would be advisable for municipalities to establish regular participation mechanisms with a stable frequency and sufficient planning in advance. The aim would be to establish minimum requirements to encourage the presence of families, users and professionals from the educational field, which should take place at least at two points in time: in the stage prior to the start-up of the programme, to validate the contents and methodologies that will be used; on the other hand, once the programme has been completed, to assess its suitability and the degree of compliance with the agreed commitments. The municipal corporation should participate and, at the same time, mediate this relationship between private entities, citizens and professionals in the field of education. In this way, there would be a shared responsibility in the formulation of the programmes that these entities present to the municipalities, with a transmission of the real needs and even knowing the success of various existing programmes, to configure these programmes with flexibility so that they allow for small modifications to be made from their design based on the demands aimed at further developing their inclusive potential. For example, there are specific disabilities such as deafness or blindness where the absence of professional accompaniment generates basic difficulties for children, potential users of this programme, to even consider using this public service, a need, in this specific case, for qualified staff, which in its roots derives from the absence of funds for recruitment purposes. Another frequent problem derives from being able to access the necessary materials to participate in a programme, as sometimes happens with aquatic activities: “a float to put on the little legs so that it does not rub, which is a float, which is not worth anything, which supposedly has nothing because it costs three hundred euros at the orthopaedic shop” (family member of pupils with inclusion needs).

C.2. With regard to the scant participation of Infant and Primary Schools in the configuration of the municipal offer of educational programmes, it is possible that the problem does not lie in the absence of communication channels, as they exist, are fully recognised in the regulations and enjoy social visibility, but their real role does not fulfil this function. As we were told by the third sector that, “Spain is a very advanced country in terms of legislation because we have everything regulated, and furthermore, everything is wonderfully regulated, in order to provide a full response to the needs of individuals, whatever their condition, what happens is that we then have an enormous lack of compliance with these laws”. The best example is the School Council, which is characterised as a merely consultative body, “it is a consultative body in which proposals are made, but no decisions are made” (political representative). Nor could the problem be associated with problems of representation, as families with children with inclusion needs are not underrepresented; if anything, on the contrary. They are sometimes families with greater involvement in the educational needs of their children. Therefore, the proposal seems clear: to provide school councils with greater decision-making power and binding commitments regarding the role of local authorities in the exercise of their competences as promoters of educational inclusion.

On a day-to-day basis, the existence of figures such as the welfare coordinator in the centre could help to promote such communication since this figure, which has been established in other autonomous communities, seeks to address issues of this nature with greater dedication and qualification, but there are limitations in Galicia, where it is a position that has not made a significant contribution, since when it exists, “it is occupied by a teacher from the teaching staff who is released from teaching; it should be occupied by a social educator” (management).

C.3. The community approach to inclusion is as complex as it is recommendable to translate into practice, and although its ideal materialisation is difficult, it should be a horizon that guides inclusive actions. On the one hand, a community perspective on the promotion of educational inclusion is not perceived; the group of school professionals and families, on the other hand, and the political class and third sector entities, on the other hand, are especially disconnected. There is a lack of a systemic vision of childhood and a clear conception of inclusion, sharing an expressed idea formulated by a third-sector professional when she indicated that “the regulations are coherent and not bad, but there is a lack of sensitivity and awareness of what diversity truly is”.

In terms of how to address ADAPT threats, the following lines of action can be identified:

A.1. Plan inclusive political actions take into account the need for them to extend beyond actions, almost always urgent, of an infrastructural nature. Given that this is an issue known—one might even say assumed—by most of the people interviewed, it should be possible to anticipate what is repeated every year: investments in infrastructural issues and their urgency condition budgets to meet needs that go beyond the just-in-time mercantilist model, with a neoliberal basis that clashes head-on with the foundations of the welfare state. This is why the preventive nature of these programmes and their enormous social profitability (which on many occasions would also be economic) should be strongly emphasised, although, in societies of haste and immediacy, it is almost utopian to put forward proposals in the medium and long term. For all of the above reasons, in addition to this palliative support dedicated to solving infrastructural needs, which is fundamental for the functioning of schools, it would be advisable to give due importance to educational programming in the provision of resources, which coincides with a frequently mentioned problem, but where the associated reflections on most occasions do not allow us to go beyond complaints about the insufficiency of these resources, assuming this tense normality in the management of public budgets destined for educational inclusion.

A.2. Coordination between the various municipal areas is an issue that does not require much explanation, as inclusion cannot be addressed solely by the department of education or by the department of architecture, culture or social welfare; rather, through joint coordination, the possibility of introducing effective improvements can be optimised. Knowing the complications of local politics, with different levels of dedication and allocation between departments, or perspectives on inclusion that are based on different approaches, it seems to be a relatively manageable issue to be addressed, at least at the initial level of interdepartmental discussion and debate, without underestimating the complexity involved in successfully putting it into practice.

A.3. The need for training and awareness-raising on inclusion at the municipal level (both for politicians and civil servants performing related functions) could be an argument for ensuring the transfer of inclusive methodologies to municipal educational programmes. On the other hand, with regard to the diversity of interests anchored in the local political-electoral dimension, the logic of change seems more complex to address, based on the functioning of party politics and the electoral profitability of some of the programmes, which, due to their visibility, good acceptance, media attention, etc., are not always easy to achieve. In this sense, granting this visibility based on criteria of quality and the inclusive capacity of one programme or another would be a strong argument for obtaining this performance in terms of party politics without necessarily having to subjugate oneself to the more mediatic criteria that lead to the visibility of a programme, as they are sometimes more important for their visual impact or the participation of locally famous or recognised people than for their potential educational inclusion.

On the other hand, we must MAINTAIN and build on the strengths of the municipal offer:

M.1. The supply of programmes aimed at educational inclusion should be strengthened. There is undoubtedly a wide margin for action to promote inclusion through municipal educational programming, especially regarding funding. As argued in the theoretical framework, on paper, there are multiple municipal competences in the field of education, but in a decentralised state, the availability of funding and support for the effective development of these competences involves the State Administration as a whole. Moreover, given that there is a multiple and varied offer, specifically oriented to ages 3 to 12, where many programmes show continuity throughout the different courses or years, this is a good starting point. In any case, it is essential to improve the funding allocated to educational actions, which should implement the possibilities that local corporations have so that the competences attributed to them are materialised in political actions that go beyond palliative dimensions.

M.2. The education councillors interviewed also show a clear intention to promote inclusion, with first-hand knowledge of the programmes of the education council itself and those promoted by other areas of the municipal government. Moreover, at all times, there is a willingness to collaborate and promote close and frequent contact with schools. In this sense, it is worth highlighting the specific training in educational matters of the most senior officials interviewed. At the same time, it is worth noting the constant mention of resource limitations, which condition the work that can be carried out by councils: “If we want quality education, we have to start to apply courageous measures and put the centres in conditions... and that we have to spend more, we have to spend more of the budget. Therefore, let us spend it, let us increase it” (political representative). In this way, it is worth reflecting on whether the competences attributed to the areas of education at the municipal level can be made effective, even by approximation, due to inadequate budget distribution.

Finally, it is important to identify the possibilities to better EXPLORE the opportunities identified:

E.1. The actual functioning of the bodies for participation by schools and citizens, in general, should be reconfigured. One obvious proposal, possibly the most operative, would be to transform the School Councils, which are fundamentally consultative in nature, into bodies with greater managerial capacity. In any case, this is not a proposal that can be implemented solely on the basis of the will of the people involved, be they politicians, management teams, or families.... Rather, we must once again stress the need to provide local authorities, the focus of this analysis, with the material and human resources to enable them to meet the demands of the School Council, in line with their role as a reference body to give a voice to the whole community, since, as we have already mentioned, the information provided at the local level is of vital importance to meet the needs of all people, thus creating, in a coordinated manner, educational programmes that favour inclusion and respond to the demands of each municipality.

E.2. The diversity of the areas in which municipal corporations develop programmes for educational inclusion varies, and this is perceived as an issue addressed interdepartmentally. The possibility of strengthening the cross-cutting nature of inclusion through the coordination of the various municipal areas, both in the design of programmes and in their implementation, is therefore alluded to. This would, in turn, be a strategy to avoid overlapping in the offer, although this issue was not detected as particularly problematic in the programmes analysed. Collaborative work, such as sharing the design and management of educational inclusion programmes, would lead to greater efficiency, given that in the current panorama, we find proposals associated with departments such as education, social welfare, sports, culture or equality, which could be integrated, organised in the calendar or shared dissemination strategies.

E.3. The advantage of existing proposals is that they place greater emphasis on inclusion. There are many cases in which the programmes analysed could be implemented to further enhance inclusion: improvements in infrastructure, coordination with schools or the collection of information on the demands of families are some examples. It does not seem to be a question of the number of programmes but rather of qualitatively and economically strengthening the existing ones.

To conclude, with a global and synthetic conceptual overview of the results of the in-depth interviews, we focus on the differences in identifying the most repeated concepts between the political class, on the one hand, and the rest of the collectives, on the other hand, knowing that the position (central or peripheral) and the representation of the size of the concepts refer to their centrality and presence in the discourses. Thus, the following word clouds allow us to glimpse a certain distance between the approach of the political class and the rest of the educational community, even though we recognise a hopeful number of confluences (see Figure 2).

This second graphical representation shows the visual presentation of the word cloud produced from the set of in-depth interviews (see Figure 3):

In terms of centrality, we observe that in the case of political representatives, the main concern lies with the schools, an added argument for strengthening their participation in municipal educational programming of an inclusive nature. They show greater concern for relational issues (with schools, teachers or families) or the coverage of needs in facilities than for promoting inclusion (other central concepts in their discourses would be those of the classroom, teachers or needs). On the other hand, inclusion itself is at the centre of the debate in the interviews with the rest of the participants, and although there are multiple approaches, accounts of experiences, and reflections on the reference regulations or proposals for improvement, the reflections contain a greater depth on educational inclusion.

From another analytical dimension, the size of the words indicates the intensity with which they appear in the discourse. In this case, we found smaller differences between most of the most important concepts, where some concepts such as inclusion, centres, teachers, classrooms, families, pupils, needs, time or activities appeared more frequently in both sets of interviews. However, as they are in-depth interviews, the breadth of the content of the responses allows us to investigate concepts with relatively lower visibility than the previous ones but with a high presence that makes them significant. At this level, we find the greatest differences since, from the political level, we find few conceptual references to aspects demanded by the school community, such as training, resources or participation, which can be interpreted in coherence with the lines of argument developed in the SWOT analysis.

Finally, we present a conceptual network to visually represent the relationships among the code categories used (see Figure 4). From a global perspective, it is worth highlighting the difficulties in accessing resources, primarily due to the extensive bureaucracy and shortcomings in the regulatory framework, which constitute a significant political and administrative barrier. As a result, exclusionary situations emerge, which the existing support measures fail to resolve, as illustrated in the image by weak and less intense relationships.

4. Discussion

First, it highlights a central idea relating to the role of schools and their relationship with educational proposals developed at the local governance level. If schools are deprived of participation in those educational actions that focus on personal well-being and school integration, their role is relegated to a technical role, oriented towards the development of a curriculum based more on the teaching staff than on the pupils, which, in accordance with the duty of surnames such as integrated and globalised, should go much further than providing pupils with accumulative knowledge detached from their day-to-day lives, besides going against basic premises such as placing human development at the core of educational policies [34].

A key issue, aligning with one of the main contributions of this proposal, relates to empowering school councils with greater capacity for effective decision-making, thereby granting them greater autonomy. This would, in parallel, entail the necessary specific training for the school management of its members, as well as the availability of resources to address real school demands. Studies such as the one conducted by Bandur, Hamsal and Furinto [35] demonstrate how enhancing the managerial competences and capabilities of the school council in school decision-making contributes to improving the quality of educational services. It also highlights the need for training for board members to optimise the management of their assigned competences.

The information extracted from the interviews explicitly shows that the perspective of inclusion is transversally present in the programmes and activities aimed at educational centres and, from a general perspective, at all citizens residing in the municipalities under study. However, in the definition of the absolute majority of the programmes, there are no specific references to inclusion (beyond the reduction in fees in the case of disability) or to working methodologies that could favour inclusive processes. There are few specific academic studies focused on analysing municipal educational programmes that promote school inclusion, making this a specific contribution of this study to educational practice and a line of future research to continue exploring. An example of this is the study developed with the analysis of municipal educational programmes in the city council of Victoria-Gasteiz [36], which shows how values such as inclusivity, following the denomination used in this case study, are not worked on in early childhood education and hardly in primary education. At the same time, initiatives promoting social and educational inclusion based on community networking, such as the Educational Environment Plans proposed by the Department of Education of the Generalitat from Catalunya in 2006, show the usefulness of interinstitutional work to meet the educational needs of pupils, especially the most vulnerable cases [37].

Another of the main conclusions lies in the absence or ineffectiveness of communication channels for schools to maintain direct and fluid contact with the municipal corporation, to transfer the demands of schools to promote school inclusion from a community action perspective. In a similar vein, examples of initiatives such as the increasingly widespread Child-Friendly Cities initiative in Galicia show that there are stable channels of communication of children’s needs that receive due attention from municipal corporations. There are exemplary proposals within the framework of the programmes analysed that integrate inclusive approaches, but they are processes mediated by third-sector institutions where, despite working in a qualified manner on issues affecting children, they do not contemplate school demands either. This model of agreements with third-sector entities is a common practice in Spanish municipal policy with regard to educational proposals emanating from municipalities.

On the other hand, there is a conception of inclusion, also prevalent in the scientific literature, where context is perceived as a mediating factor for inclusion, further deepening the conceptual confusion [38]. This lack of specificity is closely tied to issues related to physical or intellectual disabilities, often sidelining other problems such as language, gender, sexuality, or race, to name a few examples. While these issues are also present in the discourse, communication and collaboration from a community perspective remain even more limited. In this regard, sharing a common perspective on inclusion among the various actors who design and develop educational programmes is a key aspect. In this way, the concentration of values within local educational governance reflects a scenario where municipal administrators take multiple initiatives to promote inclusive education, yet their approaches often lack specificity and clarity [4].

Among the main limitations of this work is the imbalance in the number of informants within each group. Although informants were selected based on the saturation of discourses within each group, in some cases, they may appear unrepresentative of the general population for the study’s objective. Another significant limitation relates to the absence of a checklist, such as COREQ-32, which would provide greater transparency, a more structured approach to the research procedure and the elimination of sampling biases associated with the analysis of the collected information, among other benefits.

To broaden the scope of this study in the future, it would be beneficial to diversify the data collection methodologies by integrating traditional interviews with participatory dynamics that encourage greater participant engagement. These approaches would not only grant participants a more proactive role but also foster interaction among them, paving the way for more creative and innovative research frameworks. For future research of a similar nature, combining qualitative information with quantitative data could provide added value. Such data could either be collected within the study itself or obtained from secondary data sources, both of which could support and reinforce the findings presented.

The urgency, always prioritized over importance, linked to the difficulties of working with sufficient competences but with a lack of resources, hinders the real articulation of a community perspective in the promotion of inclusion [5], which is essential for developing structural and transversal actions from local governance [18]. In this sense, a profound reflection on the role of municipalities in the promotion of education should be carried out, with measures that extend beyond the “everything changes so that nothing changes” so that, if we truly consider the participation of municipalities in educational inclusion to be important, something truly changes.