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The Municipal Socialist Group denounces that the Government of López Miras has hardened the criteria to benefit from the free textbooks leading families to have to live in extreme poverty to apply for this help

The requirements demanded by the Ministry of Education regarding the scholarships referred to in previous years were disproportionate, the defendants in the 2018/2019 course are directly abusive.

For example, until now a couple with a child could only access the aid for textbooks and school supplies if their gross income did not exceed 1030 euros per month.

This same family may not be entitled to this subsidy in the 2018/2019 academic year if it receives 620 euros per month, which makes the call for aid "somewhat outrageous", according to the Socialist spokesperson at the City of Murcia, Susana Hernández.

These are amounts that exclude the vast majority of families that need help when facing the difficult task of returning to the classroom after summer vacations, with the expense that this entails.

"It is not enough to have a precarious family economy to be able to access these aids, you have to be poor, almost poor in solemnity, so that the Ministry of Education pays the amount of school books in thousands of Murcian homes," says Hernandez.

"Every year there were minors in our municipality who started the course with empty backpacks, so the City Council had to enable aid to alleviate this situation, as the requirements hardened and the threshold of extreme poverty became much smaller. Murcia begin their classes without textbooks and material, thus increasing inequality, "adds the councilor of the PSOE, who considers that the PP sees these scholarships" more as a sign of Christian charity than as a right that is basic in the Constitution, the one of an accessible Education for all ".

All this will lead the Socialist Group to submit a motion to the Plenary this June demanding that the Community rectify and modify the requirements for scholarships with more realistic criteria and also demand that the City Council plans an extension of the annual budget this type of aid to ensure that all children of Murcia begin the 2018/2019 course with the necessary material to receive a quality education.

Source: PSOE Murcia