Cristina Uriarte Toledo

Minister of Education

Welcome to the website of the Department of Education of the Basque Government. I hope that the information it contains is of interest to you.

At the Department of Education, we have a holistic view of education, adapted to Basque citizens of the 21st century and we intend to move forward in terms of equity and the quality of the Basque education system towards excellence, while promoting equity. We must give our sons and daughters a value-based education that promotes coexistence, peace, reconciliation, solidarity, equal opportunities, tolerance, effort and responsibility.

We will continue to work to ensure high quality teaching, offering teachers appropriate initial and continuous training, and contribute to the improvement in the governance and management of centres.

We must also preserve one of our most precious treasures: Basque. By enhancing its learning and use, we will make linguistic coexistence a reality. We will promote bilingualism in the framework of multilingual education, based on an integrated treatment of languages.

Moreover, we are in constant social and productive evolution and transformation that requires us to promote new strategies and the acquisition of new professional abilities and skills. To this end, maintaining leadership in vocational training of excellence will remain a fundamental pillar of our education system, increasingly advanced vocational training, establishing new possibilities, responsibilities and goals. In turn, this development and adaptation needs to be backed up with a strategy in favour of higher education and research. We will continue in our determined commitment to excellence, specialisation and internationalisation as keys to the success of our of university education model and science policy.

We will continue to promote the Basque science policy through the funding of basic research through universities, research groups and centres of excellence. A challenge that is underpinned by the recruitment, retention and training of research talent through Ikerbasque.

If we want to have an advanced society, we need to base it on an advanced education system. Education is a key factor to progress and well-being. It is clear to me that education is a challenge for our country, a collective challenge, and that is why the pursuit of dialogue, of consensus for reaching agreement, agreement that requires the cooperation and participation of the entire education community, will be essential for this legislature.

The human team that makes up this Department will work in order to not disappoint your expectations.

Kind regards,

Cristina Uriarte Toledo

Minister of Education