Education The Government eliminates the make-up exams in ESO and it will be possible to pass the course directly
Education Isabel Celaá eliminates failures as a criterion to repeat and obtain the title in compulsory education
Spain is the country of the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
with the highest proportion of repeaters in
ESO
. The
8.7%
of students enrolled has repeated a
grade, compared to the
1.9%
average of thirty countries and territories that make
up this international organization. In
Baccalaureate
the rate is also very high (
7.9%
compared to
2.9%
) and only surpassed by the
Czech Republic
.
The data comes from the annual report on education that the OECD has published this Thursday simultaneously in half the world. The work, of half a thousand pages, recalls that
60%
of those who repeat are men. Despite this, neither the Government nor the Autonomous Communities contemplate specific measures designed specifically for boys - the gender perspective focuses on girls - in order to reduce the mix of lack of knowledge, few expectations and loss of motivation that ignites the Wick of repetition and that is also the origin of early abandonment and leads, later, in the high figures of youth unemployment. The report also warns that there are
22%
of young people between 18 and 24 who neither study nor work, the so-called
NEETs
. Single
Italy
surpasses us as a European country and we are at the same level as
Mexico
,
Costa Rica
,
Colombia
or
South Africa
.
The Government has just launched an educational reform where it is urged to reduce repetition and make it something exceptional, which can only be done if they are decided among all the teachers of a student. The problem is that this approach sees repetition as a problem and not as a symptom that something prior is not going well. What seems to work, and there is the example of
Castilla y León
, is to give individualized treatment to students who are lagging from the first day and not wait until the last moment to take action, pass them through the course and give them the title without limit of failed (the problem accumulates for the following year) or simply eliminate make-up exams.
According to
Jorge Sainz
, professor of Applied Economics at the Rey Juan Carlos University of Madrid and former Secretary General of Universities with the PP, "the government's strategy has been to lower the cost of the course by removing the extraordinary exams and allowing to promote with failures." "It is a fallacy of composition: as they pass the level it seems that they know more, but the problem becomes entrenched in the long term, which in the long run will create more inequality," he warns.
The
Ministry of Education
does seem to have succeeded
in removing the
PROA
program from oblivion
, which are private classes in the afternoons in small groups, in line with a much more ambitious plan that exists in the
United Kingdom.
But its promoters see that the 320 million euros allocated are insufficient and that it would take at least 500 million to do things well, in addition to completing it with other measures aimed at improving the qualification and specialization of teachers.
Daniel Sánchez Serra
, an OECD analyst, explains to EL MUNDO that "we must try to improve learning by identifying and responding to the student's needs from the beginning and provide corrective support as soon as difficulties are identified." He speaks of "supportive learning environments" where "students develop a growth mindset and learn to see mistakes as an essential part of the learning process."
The OECD also points out in its work that Spain does not use enough an exit route that other countries do:
VET
. "In most countries, boys are more likely than girls to take a vocational training equivalent to the upper secondary level. This is not the case in Spain, where
50%
of the graduates in intermediate degree vocational training in 2019 were male , compared to the
55%
average for the OECD. Girls are more likely to graduate from high school and this is also the case in Spain, where they represent 55% of graduates, the same percentage as in the rest of the countries ", explains the job.
Therefore, there is a brake at the end of compulsory education that leads many more boys than girls to drop out of school. Vocational training could be a way out to continue studying, but something happens there that they don't take it. Meanwhile, girls are thriving in high school and going to college at a higher rate (
54%
of women between the ages of 25 and 34 have higher education compared to
41%
of men of the same age). The higher qualification of women, however, does not guarantee them professional success: they are less likely to get a job and are less paid than their peers, emphasizes the OECD.
"It is true that in Spain the repetition rate is very high, the highest in the OECD in ESO. And that the repetition rate affects students from disadvantaged backgrounds to a greater extent. I fully agree with the Ministry of Education in the The objective is to reduce the repetition rate. What I do not agree on is how to do it, "says
Ismael Sanz
, vice-rector for Quality at the Rey Juan Carlos University and former director of the National Institute for Educational Evaluation.
In the opinion of this professor of Economics, "reducing the repetition rate by lowering the level of demand and facilitating promotion is the easy shortcut: it is an artificial way to reduce school failure, because the problem, the lack of learning of some students continues there".
He points out that "the way to deal with repetition is through support plans for priority centers, evaluations to check the best ones and tutorials in small groups, as shown in a recent study by the researchers
Michela Carlana,
from the
Harvard University, and
Eliana La Ferrara
, from Bocconi University ".
"In addition," he continues, "although the repetition rate in Spain is very high, the percentage of students who had repeated at least one occasion at the age of 15 was 42.6% in 2006/07. And since then it has all dropped the years -14 in a row- until reaching 28.9% in 2019/20. The rate of repeating students in ESO decreased from 13.3% in 2009/10 to 8.5% in 2019/20. is going down in Spain without doing anything artificial, why intervene by reducing the level of demand and facilitating promotion? ".
The
OECD
Education Overview
report
He also mentions Spain for other reasons:
Disparities between autonomies
The international organization points out the educational "disparities" between regions, especially in the university. "The proportion of adults between 25 and 64 years of age with higher education varies from 26% in
Ceuta
to 53% in the
Basque Country
, one of the highest regional variations in all OECD countries based on the available data" , he points out.
It also observes important differences between the autonomies - of more than
24 percentage points
- in the employability of adults who do not even have a Baccalaureate.
This variability is lower -15 points- among those who have gone to university.
As for young people who neither study nor work, there is up to 19 percentage points of distance between the region with the most
NEETs
and the one with the least, although the report does not reveal which ones.
Pandemic
Here Spain has done its homework, as we are one of the countries that has closed schools for the least time due to Covid-19, along with
New Zealand
,
Luxembourg
,
Norway
and the
Netherlands
.
The combination of prevention measures and hygiene paid off last year.
The OECD commends us for having distributed electronic devices and increasing the education budget thanks to European funds.
However, it warns that the youth unemployment rate has increased by two percentage points compared to 2019 (we are the worst country in the EU and the third worst in the OECD).
It is a return to the vicious circle: repeaters, abandonment,
ninis
, unemployment ...
Teachers salary
The OECD says that salary, which is the most important expenditure on education, "has an impact on making the profession more attractive." In most countries, the salary of teachers and principals increases according to the level they reach and according to their accumulated experience. Veterans have salaries that are 86% to 91% higher than those just starting out. But this is not the case in Spain: the highest salaries are only between 42% and 40% higher than the lowest.
The starting payroll for a high school teacher in Spain is not bad at all (only
Luxembourg
,
Germany
,
Switzerland
and
Denmark
surpass us
), but then it gets stuck and that perhaps is not encouraging teachers to give their best.
The OECD adds that, while in most countries salaries have risen, in Spain they have fallen by 3% for secondary school teachers.
On the other hand, we are struck by the fact that the templates are aging: 38% of Spanish secondary school teachers are over 50 years old and will have to retire in the next decade.
Are job opportunities open in this field?
It doesn't seem like it, because fewer and fewer children are being born and the school population is clearly in decline.
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