More than two decades after its creation in 2002, the center still lacks its own building and continues to share municipal facilities with UNED under very limited conditions. This situation has forced the relocation of four classrooms to IES Almadrava due to lack of space.
Currently, the school offers instruction in six languages —German, Spanish for foreigners, French, English, Italian, and Valencian— with a total of 101 courses and nearly 2,060 students. However, the infrastructure is not prepared to accommodate this volume of activity, as it lacks an assembly hall, adequate library, archive, sufficient offices, or departments, and the concierge desk is literally located under a staircase.
In addition to the lack of space, there is a lack of air conditioning. Last June, several students fainted due to the heat in the classrooms, a problem that remains unresolved. The director, Cristina Palazón, insists that current conditions seriously hinder both teaching and learning.
Academically, one of the main problems is the high student-teacher ratio per group. In some levels of Spanish for foreigners, there are up to 35 students per classroom, a figure that teachers consider “unacceptable” for effective language learning, especially in initial levels where oral practice is fundamental.
“"I am not asking for more language groups, but to be allowed to organize them according to needs."
Staff cuts and internal organizational changes have further aggravated the situation. Four Italian groups, two French, and one German group have been eliminated, equivalent to the loss of at least one full-time teacher. Furthermore, new staffing orders have significantly reduced hours allocated to coordination and management tasks. One of the most unsettling incidents was the dismissal of the vice-director mid-course, communicated by phone and accompanied by the retroactive withdrawal of three paychecks.
The educational community demands urgent solutions, such as improved infrastructure with its own building, reversal of cuts, reduction of ratios, and greater autonomy to adapt the educational offer to real demand. The Ministry of Education has indicated that the number of authorized units corresponds to the number of enrolled students and that there is an instruction for extreme temperatures, but the EOI of Benidorm believes these explanations do not resolve the structural problems.
