Religious education in state primary schools: the case of Catalonia (Spain)

Abstract In a pluricultural and multi-religious world, with high levels of social secularisation, the role of religious education in schools (especially in state-funded schools) has inundated political and academic debate throughout Europe, which is becoming increasingly more committed to integrating, non-confessional models. In this context, it is essential to analyse how religious education is managed in countries whose relationship between state and religion is still firmly rooted (as is the case of Spain), and what the action of schools and families is in contexts where confessional religion is maintained in schools. Based on a quantitative study of 380 representatives of primary school management teams, it is seen that one in four schools does not teach any type of religion, either due to a lack of demand from families or because the school chooses not to do so. In addition, the study shows the practical limitations of the confessional model to provide a response to the religious and secular diversity of our time, as the implementation of minority confessions is very scant while there is a primacy of the catholic confession in the religion subject.


Introduction
In recent decades, European countries have borne witness to a dual phenomenon that has placed the religion debate at the epicentre of political and academic discourse (Faas, Darmody, and Sokolowska 2016;Jackson 2014;Watson 2010). On the one hand, globalisation and growing migratory flows have turned Europe -and other states (Wang 2013) -into increasingly more pluricultural societies. In addition, and in second place, the growing and continuous social secularisation that occurs in most areas is diversifying the religious panorama of our time even more (Jackson 2014;Watson 2010). In light of this situation, every country has adopted different policies for managing religious education that can be grouped, despite their multiple specificities, in two major trends: the non-confessional multi-faith approach (e.g. England, Wales, Scotland, Norway or Sweden) and the confessional approach (e.g. Greece, and explain the world (Alberts 2010), dominates the scientific debate. This is not just the case in countries such as England or Norway (Barnes 2015;Hand 2015;Jackson 2014;Tillson 2011;White 2004), where traditional religious education -the aim of which was to instil a specific tradition of faith in the children -has been abandoned in favour of more integrating and non-confessional measures, but also in countries where education of a markedly confessional nature continues to prevail, such as Greece, Finland or the German Federal States (Franken 2016;O'Toole 2015;Zilliacus and Kallioniemi 2016). In addition, a number of international institutions, most notably the European Council, have related the more integrating religious management options with the acquisition of intercultural skills (Jackson 2014), and therefore with the possibility of increasing the social cohesion so demanded by pluricultural societies (Francis, Sion, McKenna & Penny, 2016). Consequently, amid such prominence of the integrating debate, it is important to study what happens in those countries where the confessional option continues to be maintained in schools and analyse whether these societies are starting to see the road lead towards this multi-religious and non-confessional educational possibility, which becomes a possible option for providing an answer to the social needs and challenges posed by the twenty-first century (Alberts 2010).

Society, state and religion in Spain
Historically, religion has exerted a great deal of influence on the development of political and education systems throughout Europe (Watson 2010), and although the values and roles of the church have changed, it continues to play a decisive role in many contemporary societies (Faas, Darmody, and Sokolowska 2016). This is the case of Spain, where the 1978 Spanish Constitution (the directives of which continue even today, nearly 40 years after it was drafted) does not build a wall, or even a clear dividing line, between state and confessions, but quite the opposite: it orders the political authorities to build bridges with the Holy See and take religious beliefs into account, which clearly translates into a stance that is favourable to religion by Spanish leaders (Rey 2012). However, parallel to this political reality, Spain has also recently experienced a process of progressive social secularisation that, as stated by Pérez Agote (2012), can be clearly seen in the data on religiousness and religious practice among Spaniards.
The Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS), an autonomous Spanish agency reporting to the Ministry that conducts annual studies into the social reality in Spain, stated in its most recent sociological study (CIS 2016) that 69.9% of Spaniards continue to define themselves as Catholic, but only 14.6% of this group go to church nearly every Sunday and holiday, and 2.5% do so 'several times a week' -by contrast, 56.9% almost never do it. In other words, a high percentage of the Spanish population still declares itself to be Catholic despite not practising it every day. If we compare these data from 2016 with the data recorded, for example, in 2013 (CIS 2013) and 1998(CIS 1998, we see that stating to be Catholic has progressively fallen at a constant and progressive rate (in 1998, 84.5% of the population considered themselves to be Catholic, while in 2013, 70.6% did). With regard to the group that considers themselves to be non-believers or atheists, the statistics have gone from accounting for 10.6% of the population in 1998, to representing 24% in 2013 and 25.8% in 2016. Besides this, the above CIS study in 2016 shows that 2.4% declared themselves to be believers of other religions, whereas in 1998, this was 1.5%. This increase of other religions in a traditionally Catholic country is explained, apart from conversions of Spaniards, by the migratory flows that Spain has received, especially since the mid-1990s, which has led to a significant increase in cultural and religious diversity in the country (see Garreta 2003;Domingo 2016).
However, despite the trend towards secularisation and social multiculturality, education policies continue to be influenced by, or at least imbued with, the historic relationship that the church has maintained with the Spanish state, so maintaining the confessional nature of religious education.

Religious education in Spanish schools
Article 27 of the Spanish Constitution recognises the right to education and freedom of teaching, and it specifies that the public authorities must ensure families that children receive religious and moral education in line with their own convictions. The basic regulation of this right was established in the Agreement of the Spanish State with the Holy See, of 3 January 1979, and set out in the Constitutional Religious Freedom Act of 1980. As a result of this legislative framework, since the beginnings of the Spanish democracy, there have been two solutions adopted to manage religious education, which have steadily succeeded each other according to the political group in power.
The first solution consists of establishing religious education as a part that counts in the academic record, so maintaining the fundamental nature of the subject, as the agreement with the Holy See promoted. As a non-confessional alternative, a compulsory ethics and/or history of religions subject is offered, as is the case in other countries that also follow separatist and/or confessional policies, such as Finland, Belgium, Greece and many German Federal States (Alberts 2010). The second, more 'laicist' , option (for a more in-depth look, see Díez 2016) gets rid of the alternative compulsory subject, which is replaced by other educational or fun activities. This means that all the students enrolled on the non-confessional option are assured alternative educational care in which each school establishes the activity it considers to be the most suitable, resulting in a very varied range of alternative options, which may go from mathematics revision to citizenship education. However, whatever the policy adopted by the state, the religion subject has always been compulsory for schools but optional for the students. 1 To give an example, the most recent education laws are a reflection of this regulatory wavering. The Constitutional Education Act (LOE 2006) established complementary activities (being any that the school decreed in its School Education Project) as an alternative to religion and an assessment of religion that did not count in the academic record. The change of government saw the passing of the Constitutional Educational Quality Improvement Act (LOMCE 2013), which has opted for the first option and has created a compulsory alternative subject to religion called 'Social and civic values' in primary, and 'Ethical values' in secondary. In this case, both the religion subject and its alternative are assessed and the mark counts in the academic record. 2 We see, then, that the alternative option to religion is a controversial issue in Spain that varies according to the political situation of the country. By contrast, although there is also debate between whether the religion subject counts in the academic record or not -and consequently whether to afford it greater or lesser curricular importance -it is characterised in all cases by its confessional nature, which currently includes the teaching of four religions: Catholic, Evangelical, Judaism and Muslim. In other words, under current legislation (LOMCE 2013), the parents and legal guardians of students have to choose between the alternative subject or the religion subject. If they choose the religious option, they also have to choose the confession they wish to be taught.
Since 1992, agreements have been signed with the Jewish, Evangelical and Muslim communities that permit the teaching of these religions in schools. As occurs in countries such as Belgium (Franken 2016), these agreements also define that it is the responsibility of the religious authorities of these faiths to decide the contents and programmes of religious education, and to propose text books and the necessary teaching material, which must, in the last instance, be authorised by the Ministry of Education. In the case of Spain, the Catholic religion programmes were published as appendices to the Official State Gazette (BOE) of 1980 and were updated in 2007 and 2015 (to look in more depth at the contents, see Boletín Oficial del Estado, 24 February 2015. 3 ) The Evangelical religion programmes were approved in 1993, and three years later, in 1996, the Islam ones were approved, although neither has been updated. 4 By contrast, the Jewish community has not yet shown an interest in developing specific programmes, an attitude that maybe due to its being small in size, which means in practice that it cannot be taught. Neither do the other two minority faiths (Islamic and Evangelical religions) map out a particularly heartening panorama. With the notable exception of the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla, where Islam is more present, the implementation of these minority faiths is very scant (Dietz 2008;Tarrés and Rosón 2009).
One of the main reasons that may explain this educational reality is the lack of common ground between the religious bodies and the agencies responsible for the application of current legislation with regard to the training and acceptance of the teachers who are to teach religious education (see, in the case of Muslims, where it is more evident: Garreta 2000Garreta , 2002. Although religious education conveys the specific confessional values of each religion, it must also follow the educational, teaching and methodological criteria established by the education authorities, without contravening the framework of democratic coexistence or infringing the respect for people and their freedoms (Llaquet 2014), which calls for a teacher profile that is very often difficult to find, being regarded as one of the difficulties experiences by many of the multi-confessional systems (Kallioniemi and Matilainen 2011;Zilliacus and Holm 2013).

Objectives and methodology
In light of the scarcity of works that focus on religious education in Spain, we decided to conduct a study into how the subjects of religion and its alternative(s) are being implemented in state primary schools (6-12 years) in Catalonia. This Autonomous Community was chosen due to its being a pioneer in receiving foreign immigration and the one that currently has the greatest presence of population of foreign origin and that has changed substantially in recent decades, if we look at the religious map: the Catholic church has lost centrality and prestige, religious minorities have gained visibility and there are increasingly more people who declare themselves to be atheist or agnostic (Griera 2016).
The empirical work was conducted using telephone surveys (between 15 May and 15 September 2015) to people who had good knowledge of how schools work: members of management teams with years of experience at the same school. More specifically, the profile of the interviewees is as follows: 65.8% are head teachers, 25.5% are heads of department, 7.4% management team secretaries and 1.3% have other responsibilities in the group. The sample was calculated taking Catalan Government data on the number of schools in the 2013-2014 academic year as the starting point. With a level of confidence of 95.5%, in the most unfavourable case (p = q = 50%), with a statistical error of ±3.2%, the sample (n) was of 380 schools.
The selection of the schools where the survey was conducted was made on the basis of the list of schools in the above Autonomous Community and with a table of random numbers, -and therefore selected at random, although ensuring that the sample represented the regional distribution of population (N), the calls to be made were selected. In each school, an interviewee on the management team who had extensive knowledge of the school and its evolution was selected. The questionnaire was designed by the team of researchers taking into account the rules on the subject, research conducted previously and a documentary interview stage (a total of 15 interviews) with experts, representatives of the education administration and religion teachers. The knowledge prior to this triple level led to the design of a questionnaire with open and closed answers (dichotomous or of scale) differentiated into two blocks: those referring to religion and its alternatives and those referring to religious diversity in general and how the schools work in this area.
On completion of the empirical work, the questionnaires were coded and tabulated and the statistical analysis was conducted. The principle results of this regarding what the schools teach and how they tell families about it are presented below.

General management of religious education
In general terms, and before entering into the analysis of the actions carried out by state schools in Catalonia, it is important to know what percentage of students follow the religion option and what percentage take the alternative option. According to the interviewees, religion (and primarily Catholic, as only in some cases do we find Evangelical religion being followed, and none in the case of the other two), would be the subject studied by 21% of students, while 79% would take an alternative education to religion. If we look solely at the schools that teach both subjects, 36.5% of families choose to enrol their children in Catholic religious education, 0.05% in Evangelical religion and 63.45% in the alternative option. In this sense, one of the first conclusions of the study is the existence of three types of school: schools where only religion is taught (2.63%), schools where only an alternative subject is taught (27.89%) and schools where both options are taught (65.26%), with the rest of the interviewees (4.22%) not answering the question. Differentiating by the number of students in the schools, we see a statistically significant difference in the smaller schools with regard to the others as they are the ones that most choose to offer only religion (the average number of students at schools that only teach religion is 89, with 301 in schools teaching only the alternative and 293 in schools teaching religion and an alternative).
If we look at the legislation (LOE 2006;LOMCE 2013), which establishes that religious and moral education is compulsory for schools to offer and optional for families, the existence of three school models with regard to religious education must be explained by a lack of family demand. However, it is not just due to this, as the reason for this situation lies between the school institution and families. When we asked members of the management team when they offer options between religion and alternatives for the families to choose (Table 1), 11.1% answered that the possibility of choice 'is not offered' by the school. If we carefully analyse this answer, we see that in the schools that do not teach religion (but simply an alternative subject), 34% have answered with 'it is not offered' , which means that in a third of these schools, the fact of not teaching religion is determined above all by the wishes of the teaching and management team. It should also be highlighted that 13.2% of the interviewees did not answer this question (with the 'doesn't know/no answer' value placed at around 2% for the rest of the questions in the study). Again, if we analyse more carefully the answer given, we see that it comes especially from schools that only teach one option (alternative in 38.7% of cases and religion in 20%, compared with 2% in the schools that teach both options). In addition, 11.1% of the ones we have placed in 'doesn't know/no answer' are there as they did not answer adequately, i.e. to the question 'when do you offer options between religion and alternatives' , they answered that 'the families do not choose other options and, therefore, it is not taught' (this answer increases, again, in the schools that only teach an alternative subject, 34.9%). In light of these results, and the comments of the interviewers who perceived doubts among the interviewees about how to answer, we can state that these interviewees in schools where only one option is taught have put the responsibility on the families for this (we suppose to justify that current regulations are followed). It should be said they did this when they were asked when they reported. To us, this means that the number of schools that only teach an alternative because that is what the management decides could be greater than the third stated above. This is, then, a revealing piece of data. Firstly, because it tells us that some of the schools do not comply with current legislation. And secondly, because it implicitly lets us know that there are management teams that have a resistant attitude towards teaching confessional religions in schools and that decide not to offer this subject in their own schools. In fact, 60% of the interviewees in schools where only religion is taught think that it is positive for the students for religion to be taught in the school, an opinion backed up by just 4.7% of interviewees in schools where only an alternative is taught (and 31% of those interviewed in schools that teach religion and an alternative (for more, see Garreta, Macia & Llevot, under assessment). With regard to how religion or other learning in its place is offered, there are multiple, and in some cases simultaneous, ways ( Table 2). The most frequent way (72.9%) is to present it through the enrolment documentation (and no explanation about what it means is given to families, instead they are the ones who decide based on reading). A long way behind, and in some cases simultaneously given the multiple answer, is the option of explaining it at the meeting with the families (31.6%), during the tutorial (20.5%), by means of an information note with no explanation (12.1%), or in the enrolment documentation with an explanation (7.9%). This same table shows how the schools that have a single offer (be it religion or alternative options) make a greater effort in explaining it to the families than the schools that offer religion and an alternative, which considerably reduce the explanation (especially in tutorials). In other words, the schools that teach a single subject explain their option in greater detail in comparison with the schools that teach religion and an alternative.

The religion subject
If we focus on the schools that offer religious education (both the ones that only teach this subject and those that teach it parallel to the alternative option), the data show the prominence of the Catholic religion over the minority religions. More specifically, 100% of these schools teach the Catholic religion, and just 1.1% teach Evangelical religion, with Islamic and Judaism religion non-existent in the schools studied. Therefore, the trend detected in previous studies (Dietz 2008;Tarrés and Rosón 2009) is corroborated in that the legal equalisation of the four faiths still has not reached the practical implementation phase in schools.
To look in more depth at this question, the interviewees were asked if they had received any type of request to teach any religion (which was, therefore, not offered), what religion it was and if they had taken the request into account or not and the reasons for not doing it if this was the answer. Of the schools, 15.8% stated that they had received a request to introduce a new religion subject. More specifically, 4% of the schools had had a request to teach Catholic religion, 9.7% Islamic religion, 4.2% Evangelical religion, 0.5% Judaic religion and 1.6% Jehovah's Witnesses. In most cases, as Table 3 shows, the answer to the request was a negative. Among the reasons given by the interviewees for not taking these requests into account, the majority discourse lay in the fact of having too few students to organise a group, -although this minimum number is not clearly defined at a legal level, which turns this discourse into a statement of intent by the respondents. If we look at the minority religions, the lack of suitable teaching staff to teach the subject appears to be a major problem, in line with other studies (Kallioniemi and Matilainen 2011;Zilliacus and Holm 2013). The lack of sufficient economic resources to pay the teachers and the fact that confessional classes of the religions requested were already taught outside the school are other arguments that were found. As can be seen in the table, on occasion, the reasons are diverse as the question permitted multiple answers.

The alternative subject(s)
With regard to the alternative education, this study has also enabled us to observe the actions that are carried out by schools when the legislation establishes what we previously called the more 'lay' option of managing religious education. In other words, when there is no specific subject as an alternative to religion at a statewide level, but it is left up to the schools to establish curricula and alternative areas. At the time the data were gathered, the LOMCE (which forces families to choose between religion or the specific subject of Education in Social and Civic Values) had not yet come into effect and, therefore, the compulsory alternative subject to religion had not yet been implemented. We feel that this fact, which could be seen to be a handicap in this study (by showing a snapshot of a Spanish reality that has evolved, although not by much as the application of the LOMCE is coming under review in 2017), should be seen, firstly, as another manifestation of the constant regulatory to and fro in the matter of religion, and therefore of the existence of a political debate in Spain about how religious education should be managed in state schools. Secondly, as an added possibility of knowing what schools do when the regulations offer them greater scope for action. Of the 93.15% of schools that offer alternative education (either as a sole option, 27.89%, or as an alternative option to religion, 65.26%), 55.9% of schools teach 'education in social and civic values' . Another significant percentage of schools, 33.8%, offer alternative learning in its place, a title in which we have encompassed all types of reinforcement, extensions or extra sessions of various core subjects such as mathematics or English. A far distance from these two options are tutorials 5 (5.9%) and philosophy 3/18 6 (2%), where the aim is to foster students' ability for reflection. These data reveal that the actions of the schools in light of the decentralised regulation of the alternative option to religion are very diverse, although the desire of the management teams to offer an education in values subject is very high. The comparison between the schools that only teach an alternative with the ones that teach this subject plus religion offer few statistically significant differences: all that is seen is that the ones that teach both subjects concentrate their answer on alternative learning (40%) and on social and civic values (58.4%); while the schools that only offer an alternative diversify the options more, although 51.9% answer 'social and civic values' (20.2% alternative teaching, 16.3% tutorials and 3.8% philosophy 3/18).

Conclusions and implications
Many countries with an extensive religious tradition, influenced by growing secularisation, the rise in cultural and religious diversity in their regions and the influence of discourses from supranational institutions (Jackson 2014), no longer teach confessional religion in schools and now act in a more integrative manner (Alberts 2010;Zilliacus and Kallioniemi 2016). Other countries, including Finland, Belgium, Greece, Austria and Spain, have maintained the confessional option in schools, designing a range of strategies (such as the offer of religious education in different minority religions and the Table 3. answer given to the request to teach one or another religion and reasons for not acceding to it. possibility of studying alternative subjects for those who do not wish to participate in any religion) to meet the demands of our society. Situated within this context, our research reveals two main results: one relating to the ability of the confessional model to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century and the other concerning the path that this confessional model is taking in Catalonia (Spain). Firstly, we should highlight the fact that the Catholic religion is present in schools, at least some of them, but the Islamic, Judaism and Evangelical confessions are not and their presence is almost anecdotal. Therefore, we should question the ability of the confessional model to respond to the challenges and needs of the society in which we live. Yet despite the four 'deep-rooted' faiths in Spain having the same legal provisions, the law does not specify the minimum number of students required to justify a group and there are not enough teachers with a suitable profile (teacher with recognised religious studies) to teach minority religions (these being the two arguments expressed by representatives of the management teams to justify why certain religions are not being taught in their schools, despite their having been requested by families).
The second result shows the existence of three types of schools when they are classified according to their offer. We have found schools that only teach religion (2.63%), schools that only teach the alternative option (27.89%), and schools that teach religion and alternative(s). This means that about a third of the schools studied only teach students one of the options, which in most cases is the alternative option to religion. Although we should analyse the reasons more closely, the attitudes of the interviewees (school managers, as they are part of the management team) helps us understand this offer a little more. The value that the respondents placed on the importance of teaching religion in schools is related to the education offer at their school. In other words, those who only teach religion at their school place greater value on what religion means for students' education than those whose school does not teach it, with those offering various options being in between. There are also schools that do not offer families the possibility to choose, with a third of schools that only teach the alternative option and 10% that only teach religion. Consequently, in both cases, the importance of the 'school's attitude' is more important than family choice (which is what is indicated by current regulations). Given that we have not detected any other significant variables to explain why one type of school provides one offer or another (except in small schools where the religion offer is greater), and without denying the role of families and their right to choose, we should point out that the attitudes of professionals are also important in defining the offer created in Catalan schools.
As we have indicated, Spanish (and Catalan) society, which is increasingly more culturally and religiously diverse and is also immersed in a process of secularisation, has an education system that recognises 'deep-rooted' religions and provides alternative options for those who do not wish to study them. However, in practice, this option does not always exist. Very seldom has there been an affirmative answer to the request for minority religions to be taught (Muslim, Evangelical and Jewish) and what we have termed the 'school's attitude' (detected through their representatives on management teams) means that the offer is not as extensive as could be hoped.

Notes
1. With regard to the number of students necessary for religions to be offered in schools, the starting point is that all students requesting it have the right to receive Catholic, Evangelical, Islamic or Judaic religion teaching, although it does not always appear to be this way in practice. For example, the same as in other laws and regulations, the Constitutional Educational Quality Improvement Act (LOMCE 2013) does not indicate the minimum number of students and it appears that it is being resolved more on the basis of the requests and the attitudes of the different administrations than due to the existence of any clear regulations in this respect. 2. The Royal Decree on Basic Teaching in Primary Education (https://www.boe.es/buscar/doc.php?id=BOE-A-2014-2222), which establishes the curriculum for this level of education, defines three themed areas in the 'social and civic values' subject: identity and dignity of people; understanding and respect in interpersonal relations; and coexistence and social values. 3. https://www.boe.es/boe/dias/2015/02/24/pdfs/BOE-A-2015-1849.pdf 4. With regard to the presence of minority religions in schools, consult Tarrés and Rosón (2009), which, among other issues, highlight that neither the Evangelicals nor the Muslims had a suitable text book until the 2006-2007 academic year. 5. The aim of the tutorial is to contribute to the students' personal and social development in intellectual, emotional and moral aspects, in accordance with their age, and it involves the individual (based on personal interviews and continuous assessment) and collective monitoring of the students by the teachers. 6. Philosophy 3/18 is a project aimed at reinforcing the students' ability to think based on philosophy as the fundamental discipline. It is carried out between the ages of 3 and 18 and aims to reinforce their capacity for thought and make students more aware of the wealth of the intellectual heritage received and prepare them for life in a democratic society.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.