The Basque Government's Department of Education has recently updated the vulnerability indices recorded in the different enrollment influence areas for Early Childhood Education students (ages 2 to 6). The new data, calculated using this indicator designed three years ago by the Basque Institute for Educational Evaluation and Research (ISEI-IVEI), reveals that the highest rates of vulnerable students in Gipuzkoa are concentrated in the municipalities of Urretxu-Zumarraga, Eibar, Arrasate, Beasain, and Azkoitia.

In these localities, the rates of vulnerable students in 2, 3, 4, and 5-year-old classrooms range between 30% and 40%. This means that almost four out of ten children in these areas are at an educational disadvantage. The case of the Urretxu-Zumarraga influence area is the most notable, with three educational centers and a rate of 38.46 vulnerable students per 100 children born in 2023. This figure has increased compared to the previous year. Eibar (37.84%), Arrasate (34.31%), Azkoitia (33.78%), and Beasain (30.48%) also present some of the highest rates in the Basque Country, although Sestao, in Bizkaia, leads with 42.41%.

The increasing presence of immigrant or migrant-origin students in Basque classrooms and the fact that three out of four minors arriving after the school year has started are foreign are two factors behind these high rates of precariousness. A student is considered vulnerable if they meet one or more characteristics such as special educational needs, developmental delay, severe lack of knowledge of the language of instruction, or a vulnerable socioeconomic situation. However, during the admission stage, the indicator focuses on socioeconomic vulnerability, as in early ages, the family situation is the most reliable source of information.

After the pandemic, ISEI-IVEI specialists developed a questionnaire for families applying for school places, gathering information on parents' educational and professional levels, the number of books at home, internet access, and other resources. The responses are grouped into five variables, and a child below the 15th percentile (the 15% with the lowest socioeconomic index) is considered vulnerable. One of the main conclusions from ISEI-IVEI is that socioeconomic segregation is the most widespread form of segregation in Euskadi, and centers with a higher concentration of vulnerable students show poorer educational outcomes.

This strategy was presented at the end of 2022 with the aim of combating school segregation in the Basque Country, proposing an equal distribution of disadvantaged students between public and subsidized networks. However, there are critical voices within the Basque educational community that denounce a "small trap" in the decree of the new admission mechanism, which forces schools to apply a 10-point differential when the distance between the vulnerability index of the center and that of the influence area exceeds 10 percentage points.