Education starts a 'road show' throughout Spain to achieve a pact in Selectivity

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

• Education Education will carry out a pilot exam in the spring to test the new Selectivity that will be implemented from 2024

The Secretary of State for Education,

, has started a

throughout Spain to reach an "agreement" between the autonomous communities on the new Selectivity.

His intention is to travel to all the territories in search of "approximation points" that facilitate a "consensual" reform of the university entrance exam.

For the moment, he has already traveled to

, the

and

, where he has met with those responsible for education, as regional sources explained to EL MUNDO yesterday.

He has also maintained telematic contacts with the senior officials of the ministries of

and the

.

The intention is to also visit the regions governed by the PP (

,

,

,

and

) in order to "advance the negotiation".

But these Autonomous Communities see it as "difficult" to reach an agreement if the Government discards its main red line: that there be a single test in all of Spain.

The first allegations of the

governments , to which this newspaper has had access, insist that "the nature of the single district of the university system leads to the need to ensure similar levels of demand in different territories and unity of criteria for correcting the tests, because only then would the principle of equal opportunities be effective and guarantee the fairness of the students».

They also agree that the so-called

will cause subjects such as

Language ,

-official Language and

to "become blurred", in addition to removing "objectivity" from the evaluation, since the Government did not define in The draft that presented the basic knowledge in June did not set specific curricular elements, as it traditionally did each year in its Ebau regulations.

These regional governments consider that the "radical change" proposed in this document has been carried out "hastily and without room for in-depth analysis."

Criteria "homologous" of elaboration and correction

The Ministry is aware that the system that allows there to be 17 different exams, although the mark that a student achieves in his city is used to enter any university in Spain, can generate susceptibilities between regions.

It offers, as a counterpart, to agree among all common criteria of elaboration and correction

, which is not the same as "equal".

That is why it has created working groups with representatives of the Ministry and the Autonomous Communities that are currently preparing the structure of the exams, to later design "comparable" guidelines for preparation and develop evaluation standards under the premise that "an 8 in an autonomy is like an 8 in another».

The work of these technical groups "is advancing", according to the Government, and yesterday there was a meeting of deputy directors general to define more criteria.

The idea is to soon present a new version of the June draft that includes some of the suggestions made by the Autonomous Communities and the rectors, so that a royal decree is ready in April or May that allows students to join the next course to Baccalaureate to be clear about the new rules of the game.

Galicia sees this "attempt to reach consensus" as "commendable", but stresses that "it does not seem like a sufficiently guaranteeing measure of homogeneity" and asks that, at least, the hierarchy of these agreements "be raised to mandatory standards" to that they have sufficient "normative force".

Andalusia, for its part, highlights that "the characteristics of the test proposed by the Ministry emphasize the nature of an education in which neither effort nor academic demands are valued" and asks that the model that the Ministry has proposed as transitory becomes the definitive one so that the change is not so great.

Madrid denounces that the EXMA, which in the final phase will have a final weight in the grade of

, "lowers the quality of the process" and advocates "a single access and admission test for the entire territory so that all Spanish students have the same opportunities.

A mid-term English oral test

In the Ministry of Education they are optimistic and believe that "there is room for agreement", especially since "nobody disputes anymore" that a way of evaluating that has not been touched for decades and that now approves more than 90% of the students .

High school teachers complain that they spend the whole year "training students for the exam", while university teachers report that young people come to them with more and more gaps.

The team led by Minister Pilar Alegría believes, in any case, that the system is capable of progressive improvement.

In fact, they were weighing the possibility of doing an oral test to assess foreign language competence.

Teachers and universities were even discussed and it was considered that this exam could be done in official language schools.

"In the short term we do not see it possible, because it presents management problems, but we do not rule it out in the long term," say sources from the Ministry of Education.

The main stumbling block of this oral exam is "the important mobilization of resources and preparation of the teaching staff" that it would imply, since almost

appear each year for the Selectividad and such a test would mean dedicating at least 10 minutes to each one of them .

The Ministry is convinced, however, that "the methodology must be changed", because "the way in which the exam is now conceived does not properly assess communicative competence".

José Manuel Bar also wants to consult the students on the design of the new Selectivity.

In the preparatory work, in addition to Education and the Autonomous Communities, the

and the

are present .

The first of the new tests won't be done until 2024, but there will be a sample pilot this spring to test the model.

In the new Ebau, students will take half the exams they do now.

Memory loses weight in favor of skills and several subjects are brought together.

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