A Systemic Solution to the Housing and Education Crises: The Examples of Spain and France

By a systemic solution I mean not a single subsidy, ban, or pay rise, but a change in the mechanism that continually reproduces the problem.

For the two cases, I would formulate the root challenges as follows:

• Spain: make it possible for the housing supply to grow over the long term approximately in line with the number of households in places where people actually want to live and work.
• France: restructure the school system so that it consistently produces measurable knowledge and skills, and so that the system can attract, train, and retain a sufficient number of strong teachers.

Therefore, in both cases I would start not with prices, but with the productive capacity of the system: housing in Spain and education in France.

1. Spain: housing

I consider the No. 1 cause to be a shortage of supply where demand is concentrated

This diagnosis is sufficiently well supported.

According to OECD, 2025, in 2022–2024 approximately 345 thousand apartments received permits in Spain, while the number of households increased by approximately 604 thousand. The OECD, also citing Banco de España, estimates the accumulated housing deficit in 2022–2025 at approximately 600 thousand units. OECD

Thus, my basic model is:

new households > new housing → shortage → competition for apartments → rising prices and rents.

Airbnb, foreign buyers, tourism, lending rates, and so on may intensify this process, but on their own they do not explain the fundamental gap.

2. The main reform — make construction elastic

I would create a nationwide Spanish mechanism:

if, in a given urban agglomeration, the population and number of households grow faster than the housing stock for 2–3 years, an increase in permitted residential construction is automatically triggered.

This means:

• faster rezoning of suitable land;
• higher-density development near metro and railway stations;
• simplified conversion of office and commercial buildings into housing;
• limits on the time allowed for municipal approval;
• standard designs and standardized permits;
• infrastructure funding for municipalities in proportion to new housing.

The OECD in 2026 identifies land-use restrictions, lengthy procedures, construction costs, and insufficient investment as structural causes of housing shortages in OECD countries. OECD

This is more important than attempts to administratively determine the “correct” price of an apartment.

3. Create a permanent public housing stock that cannot later be sold off

Here I would distinguish between two things:

the housing market and social insurance against the market.

According to OECD, 2025, social rental housing accounts for only about 3% of Spain’s housing stock. OECD

I would not set an abstract target of “10%” or “15%.” A better mechanism would be:

in each urban agglomeration, the public housing stock gradually increases until the waiting list for affordable housing and the share of income spent on housing by poorer households fall below a set threshold.

Moreover, the apartments should belong to municipal or regional housing corporations and remain rental housing 30–50 years from now, rather than becoming private property after a few years.

This creates a cumulative effect: each generation of taxpayers does not have to start the program from scratch.

4. Build not apartments, but urban agglomerations

In my view, this is one of the most important parts of a systemic solution.

If an apartment 40 km from Barcelona is cheap, but a person spends two hours commuting, it is not economically a full substitute for an apartment in Barcelona.

Therefore:

housing policy + suburban rail + metro + jobs = one system.

For example:

new rapid suburban transport station → zone of dense residential development with a radius of 500–1,000 m → schools, healthcare, shops → tens of thousands of additional apartments.

This increases the city’s actual area without the need to concentrate the entire population in the historic center.

5. Short-term tourist rentals — regulate locally, not uniformly throughout Spain

As of July 1, 2025, Spain already has a mandatory registration system for short-term rentals on online platforms; the Spanish government, Ministry of Housing, 2025 reported more than 215,000 applications for registration numbers before the system was launched. La Moncloa

I would use this data for automatic zoning regulation.

For example:

district A: 1% of apartments are tourist rentals → there is almost no reason to intervene.

district B: 15% of apartments are tourist rentals + rents are rising sharply + the housing stock is not increasing → new tourist licenses are temporarily suspended.

In other words, what is regulated is the shortage, not tourism itself.

6. The tax system should incentivize the use of housing

I would distinguish between:

• a primary residence;
• a normal long-term rental;
• an apartment that remains empty for years without a valid reason;
• professional short-term tourist use.

But one principle is important here:

a tax on vacant housing does not create a new apartment.

It may return some existing apartments to the market, so it is a supplementary, not a primary, instrument.

What the Spanish system would look like

I would reduce it to a single cycle:

demographics → needs forecasting → land → infrastructure → construction → social housing stock → monitoring actual affordability → new cycle.

And the main KPI would not be “how much money the state spent,” but:

how many years/monthly incomes a typical household needs to obtain suitable housing in its metropolitan area.

2. France: school education

Here my model is substantially different.

A teacher’s salary is important, but I would not define the education crisis as a salary problem.

According to OECD, Education at a Glance 2025, French teachers do indeed have problems with relative pay: in 2024, the actual income of a primary school teacher was approximately 26% lower than that of other workers with higher education, while that of a lower-secondary school teacher was 18% lower. The mid-career stage is a particularly weak point. OECD

But money alone does not determine what a child can do after nine years of school.

So I would start with something else.

1. Define the school’s minimum required outcome

At the end of each stage, there should be a short list of things that a child really must be able to do.

For example, after primary school:

• read an unfamiliar text;
• explain its meaning;
• write a coherent text;
• perform basic arithmetic operations;
• work with fractions, percentages, and quantities;
• solve an elementary problem;
• find and verify information.

Not “has been introduced to,” not “has developed competence,” but:

knows → understands → can perform independently.

This makes it possible to separate the educational process from the outcome of education.

2. National assessment of every child, but not to punish the school

I would introduce brief external diagnostic assessments, for example at ages 8, 11, 14, and 16.

The result is not needed to rank schools.

It answers a specific question:

where exactly did a gap arise in this child’s learning trajectory?

If a child does not understand fractions at age 12, there is no point in simply continuing with the algebra curriculum.

The system should automatically assign a remedial module.

3. Move from an “age-based curriculum” to a model of knowledge checkpoints

For example:

reading ↓ text comprehension ↓ argumentation ↓ working with sources ↓ complex text analysis

If the previous level has not been mastered, the system detects it.

The same applies to:

arithmetic ↓ fractions ↓ proportions ↓ algebra ↓ functions

This is much more systematic than simply reducing a class from 25 to 18 children.

In 2025, the OECD explicitly noted that empirical data on the overall impact of smaller classes on learning outcomes are mixed, although smaller classes can be beneficial for students from disadvantaged social backgrounds. OECD

Therefore, I would not make “15 students per class” a universal goal.

4. The teacher should be a highly qualified professional, not a low-paid executor of a state program

This already requires reforming the profession.

In 2025, the French Ministry of Education had 23,258 vacancies in the state system’s competitive examinations and accepted 21,484 candidates. In primary education, the situation improved, but problems remained in Créteil, Versailles, Guyane, and Mayotte; in mathematics, only 74.4% of the positions offered were filled. French Ministry of National Education, July 4, 2025. Ministère de l'Education nationale

Even newer data, OECD PISA 2025, published in September 2026: 45% of French students attended schools whose principals reported that teacher shortages hindered instruction to some extent. In 2022, the figure was even worse—67%. OECD

Thus, all of the following are needed simultaneously:

higher pay + a normal career path + strong selection + high-quality training.

Not just one of the four points.

5. Changing the model of the teaching career itself

At present, many state systems have mainly a vertical structure:

teacher → senior teacher → administration.

I would create professional ranks:

Teacher I → Teacher II → Master Teacher → methodologist/mentor.

At the same time, a “Master Teacher” could earn significantly more while remaining in the classroom.

This solves a fundamental problem: the best teacher should not have to stop teaching in order to have a career.

And promotion should not depend simply on years of service.

According to 2024 data, the OECD does indeed show a characteristic French problem: starting pay is already close to the OECD average, but salaries at around the 15th year of a career fall substantially behind. OECD

6. A strong teacher should receive more autonomy, but outcomes must be measured

I would divide it as follows:

the state determines:

• the minimum knowledge requirements;
• the stages;
• standardized diagnostics;

the teacher determines:

• the method;
• the pace;
• the examples;
• the textbooks;
• the way of explaining;
• additional materials.

In other words:

a strict outcome standard + freedom in how to achieve it.

In my view, this is a better arrangement than the opposite extremes—either total centralization of methodology or the absence of shared requirements.

7. The most resources—not to the “poor school,” but to a specific gap

Social background is certainly important, but the administrative category of a district is very crude.

I would structure funding approximately as follows:

basic funding for each student + language support + reading remediation + math remediation + special educational needs + social factors

Then a school where students with serious difficulties are genuinely concentrated automatically receives more:

• teaching hours;
• assistants;
• psychologists;
• remedial teachers.

The real need is funded, not the administrative label.

3. The most important common feature of the two reforms

At first glance, housing and education have nothing in common.

But the systemic problem is the same:

policymakers respond to the visible symptom                 ↓ apartment price / teacher shortage                 ↓ subsidy / ban / additional payment

I would build the system differently:

NEED  ↓ MEASUREMENT  ↓ PRODUCTION CAPACITY  ↓ RESULT  ↓ FEEDBACK  ↓ CORRECTION

For Spain:

how many households emerge → how much suitable housing the system is capable of creating.

For France:

what knowledge a child should acquire → whether they acquired it → if not, where exactly the system failed.

I consider these two mechanisms to be the core of a long-term systemic solution.

Patriarch of the Church of the Mother of God