For many people the decision to close some schools and not others is the clearest example of schools being used as political pawns. It is an experience to which anybody in Oarsoaldea can relate. If a school has not been closed within a mile radius of where they live, there have been Ikastolas going private or public, or talks of collapsing schools into one. Public opinion over this question was primarily gathered through individual interviews. A review of the answers reveals three overriding themes: (1) the government has forced changes in schools out of a need to restructure the school funding, (2) the government did so as an endorsement of the ikastolas, or (3) the changes respond to a government strategy to divide, control and weaken the Ikastola movement after it was clear that public schools’ populations were dwindling.

–section unfinished– 

Broad public oppinion understood that the current
plethora of schools was unsustainable for the government.

The need for change However, even in this broad
support there are mixed reasons given besides