Alegría renounces "homogenizing" the Selectivity and downloads it in an 'impossible' pact between CCAA and universities

• Education The Government designs a new selectivity that is easier for students, with fewer exams and a test of "academic maturity"

• Test The facilities shoot 13% those approved in the Selectivity and 85% the outstanding

The Government will replace Selectivity with a "less rote" competency model where 75% of the university entrance grade will be achieved with a test of "academic maturity" in which a good part of the questions will be test-type or to answer with a single word.

Minister Pilar Alegría renounces the promised territorial "homogenization" and entrusts the elaboration of a "common framework" to a future agreement between Autonomous Communities and universities.

In fact, in the three documents that Alegría presented this Wednesday to directors and rectors, there is already talk of “homologation” and “comparable” exams, not of “homogenizing”.

The Ministry wants "common criteria respecting the autonomy of the CCAA", but the only concrete thing that it has proposed is to write correction guides to "guarantee the objectivity" of the answers.

The idea is to create "working groups" to agree on everything and have a draft royal decree ready in December, but

and

from the PP, made it clear this Thursday that what they want is a test unique in all of

The pact is also complicated because the Autonomous Communities also have to agree with the rectors, when interests are often opposed.

In a context of polarization, and after repeated failures to reach an educational pact, various sources consulted see consensus as "impossible".

University access reform

In fact, the starting point is less homogeneous than before, since the list of minimum contents that are given in all the Autonomous Communities does not appear in the Government documents (they represent 70% of each subject).

The Ministry says that they will be recovered or not depending on what is decided in the agreement.

Easier for students

The new system, which will hold its first call in June 2024, makes it easier for students, by halving the number of exams (from the up to nine that there are now to a maximum of four) and letting them choose part of the subjects that will be evaluated.

The Ministry foresees a gradual implementation.

In a first transitory period (2023/24 and 2025/26), for the access phase (mandatory exams), students will do four exercises and they will count for 25% of the grade.

All students will take the

and a compulsory subject (

), in addition to the “maturity” test.

There will no longer be Language or English exams as such, since they are integrated into this test, on which everything pivots.

The "maturity" test will consist of a dossier of documents (texts, images, infographics, tables, graphs or audiovisuals) that will revolve around a topic and students will be asked "to carry out an analysis from different aspects and perspectives".

The student will have 15 minutes to read the questions.

Then will come the first part, of 50 minutes, which will consist of 25 closed or semi-constructed questions (multiple choice or short answer).

Of these, five and seven will be in a foreign language.

In the Autonomous Communities with a co-official language, the autonomous governments will distribute the remaining questions, which could be a drain for

to minimize Spanish.

The second part of the exercise, lasting 45 minutes, consists of three open questions (one in English) of a maximum of 150 words (the equivalent of a paragraph).

"The aim is to assess the students' ability to analyse, assess, extract information or interrelate all this documentation, in a more or less guided way through questions and answers".

This exercise format will be applicable from the 2023/24 academic year, but from 2026/27 both the duration and the extension may be doubled.

Then the test starts to account for 75% of the mark of the access phase and the mechanism is further simplified because there will only be two compulsory exams: this test (which also covers the subjects of History of Spain and History of Philosophy, in addition to of

) and an exam of the modality subject, which will count 25% of the grade.

In this access phase, these tests will count 40% and the Baccalaureate grade will count 60%.

The maximum that can be reached is 10.

maturity test

In addition, there will be another admission phase that is no longer compulsory, the equivalent of the voluntary part now, which is made up of two other exams.

The student will be able to choose between the modality or common subjects of 2º of Baccalaureate.

The weighting coefficients determined by the universities will be applied to their grades to raise the grade from 10 to 14. This gives campuses more freedom to set specific criteria based on their needs.

With the new system, students will therefore take between two and four tests from 2026: the maturity test, the modality test and the two voluntary tests, where the student can choose the subjects.

What this new approach points out is that core subjects such as Language, English, History of Spain or History of Philosophy will be more diluted in the "maturity" test, something that teachers do not like.

"It is an attack on the basic and specific preparation of students and on teaching specialization," denounces

union ,

who warns that the change "will harm the public."

The employers of the private company Cicae also see "an error to eliminate the evaluation of English and calls for" not reducing the requirement ".

Slam of the CCAA of the PP

The slamming of the new Selectivity this Wednesday by regions little given to educational confrontation, such as

and

showed how difficult it is going to be for Minister Pilar Alegría to agree with all the autonomies on the new design of the University access test.

"It is a new lost opportunity, the proposal does not work," said the Castilian-Leonese Minister of Education,

“It follows an already habitual path by the Ministry of reducing quality and the level of demand, which seems intolerable to us,” added his Galician colleague

Galicia, Castilla y León, Madrid, Andalucía

and

regions governed by the PP, transmitted the same message: they continue to ask for a single Ebau that is celebrated in the same way throughout Spain, as they do in countries like

or

.

As

deputy secretary of Social Policies of the PP, summed up, it is the way to "guarantee equal opportunities for students when choosing which university and which studies they want to study, without their place of residence being a reason for discrimination" .

"Only a single test is a guarantee of equality, it is nonsense that there are 17 different tests in Spain to access university," agreed

, the new Andalusian Minister of Educational Development.

For the single district, the mark obtained by a student in his city is used to enter the university of any other autonomous community, despite the fact that the Autonomous Communities have different levels of difficulty.

“It is an unfair and discriminatory system;

it is more of the same: reduction of content, devaluation of effort and impoverishment of the system”, stressed Lucas.

In the same way,

counselor of Madrid, expressed himself, predicting "devaluation of the quality of the system and the demand for effort, as with Lomloe."

The counselors reject the design of the test, where 75% of the grade in the access phase is taken by the “maturity” exam, in which “they intend to bring together and dilute the weight of all common subjects”, such as Spanish Language , Foreign Language or History of Spain.

Nor do they see too many real intentions on the part of the Government to reach an agreement because the proposal has been prepared "entirely" without counting on them and is presented in the middle of summer, "when all the decrees of the new curricula have not yet been published or implemented. Baccalaureate".

In fact, the Autonomous Communities received the papers minutes before the meeting began yesterday, and once they were leaked to

«We have transferred to the Ministry that we have not liked the ways in which the documentation has been transferred.

In addition, the date on which this meeting was held and the deadline given to the Autonomous Communities to make contributions, September 15, do not seem appropriate to us, since it is insufficient to be able to carry out a process of serious and calm dialogue with the educational community and the universities themselves”, warned those responsible for education in

Nor do they like the PP regions that the Government compares the new Ebau with the PISA test.

"The first consists of demonstrating that a student has the necessary knowledge to access university, while the second serves to evaluate the educational systems of each country and region in order to improve them and is not an evaluation of the student," said Ossorio. .

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• Articles Olga R. Sanmartin