Assignació de places escolars i accessibilitat per als vianants. Situació actual i propostes de millora a la ciutat de València.

Early childhood education has become a political priority and a strategic element in the development of many countries due to the multiple socio-economic benefits it brings. Spatial planners of the school network have to ensure equitable access to this service and therefore need tools and studies to assess the supply of school places and their spatial distribution, as well as the effects of different zoning policies during the allocation of school places on the spatial accessibility of schools. The aim of this work is to measure the locational accessibility of the potential demand to the network of public and state-subsidised centres that provide the second cycle of infant education in the city of València. To this end, different scenarios have been developed to simulate different demand allocation criteria, both for the current school network and for an extended school network. These scenarios have been generated by using a location-allocation model of maximum coverage with limited capacity of ArcGis 10.8 software. The comparative analysis of the results obtained in the different scenarios has made it possible to detect the existence of significant territorial imbalances in terms of accessibility to schools depending on the demand allocation criterion established. Furthermore, it has also made it possible to determine the most appropriate allocation criterion for improving the efficiency and spatial equity of the school network. Finally, proposals for the location of new schools have also been established in order to guarantee total coverage of demand and improve current accessibility to the city’s schools.