Welcome back to school if you register us now, with a special mention for the teaching staff, who started yesterday (except the directors, we know that many of you have been balancing schedules since August).
Because we have already started. This week or the next, depending on the community and/or the school stage, but we are already back on the wheel. And although it may seem complicated in the midst of so much routine, there are some new things this year. On the one hand, the reinforcement plan announced by President Sánchez will be launched right now to try to improve the results of tests such as PISA, which in its last edition left us a little bad and that always makes us nervous. The project, in case you don’t remember, aimed to reinforce mathematics and reading in the school population that needs it most. We will see what this ends up translating into, but it is already starting off wrong because it was going to have 500 million euros (and that was already considered little) and it has remained, for now, at 95.
Another new feature is that the new Selectivity is debuting in June. We already told you about it at the time: it is supposed to be more competent, with less optionality and more homogeneous.
On the unions’ agenda, there is a third new item, in this case desired: that it be the year of the teacher status. Teachers have been demanding for years, decades, a standard that governs the profession. It is even included in the Lomloe. But beyond a forgotten minimum document, the issue has not been addressed. This is now the case, say the unions. We will implement it, responds the ministry. It is missing.
Trade unions also threaten to keep the tension in the streets. Last year ended with mobilizations on various issues – ratios, teaching hours, regional laws, attacks on Catalan, the imposition of the single district, according to the community – which, for the most part, were not resolved. The green tides are rekindled in the face of new budget cuts, whether social or ideological, and threaten to continue.
Another of the recurring problems at the beginning of the course are the expenses generated by the “free” education we have received, which once again shows the disparity of criteria in the communities. Last week we told you about the case of books, which can cost zero euros or more than 300 depending on where you study. A lottery.
We covered all of these questions and more in the course preview we released today.
This summer we talked about it…
In case summer caught you looking away, I’m rounding up the most interesting articles we’ve published in the non-newsletter months.
When the school belongs to teachers and families. Did you know that there are schools that belong to teachers? Or to the students’ families. In Spain there are about 600 educational cooperatives, a third way between public and private schools. It is formally private, but with the vocation of a public school, in which decisions are made by the entire community with the flexibility that this offers. In this article, originally published in our magazine, we explain what this system consists of through the Trabenco school in Madrid, one of the pioneering cooperatives in Spain.
No one teaches students how to study, and most do it poorly.. It seems obvious that a significant part of studying is… studying. Beyond the tautology, it turns out that no one teaches young people how to study. It is somehow assumed that they know it, but that is not even close to being true. A study carried out in Catalonia revealed that 78% of them have never learned study techniques and that the majority of them therefore use useless methods. Because yes, we also learn to study, there is science behind it.
Why do you have to pay to get a college degree? You already know it: you pass the last exam of your degree and you want a physical copy of your diploma, to hang it on the wall or in case you are asked for it during a job interview. But the fees you have paid for four years do not cover this cost and your university charges you for the paper. The rectorates explain that this is an estimate of what it costs to issue the title, but the fact that the same service costs between 115 and 218 euros depending on the community makes this excuse fall a little. It is also not very well understood that the time that the civil servant dedicates to this task must supposedly be paid. Don’t you have a salary?
Without investment, there is no inclusion. The educational inclusion that Spain intends to achieve – and has decided to achieve through several laws – is complex and requires funds. That is why it is practically not practiced. The UN has already pulled our ears on this, but the reality is that there are more and more young people in special education centers, when the idea was exactly the opposite. We have analyzed what is happening and why we are going backwards instead of forwards.
To download a note
Universities will allow more online uploads in the framework of the pedagogical master’s degree. The Morant ministry has reduced the presence of the master’s degree to 40% (it was 80%). The measure, criticized by the sector, aims to harmonize the regulations, which have become obsolete, with what actually happens in universities.
Ayuso, Ramiro and 30 days of chaos. The attempt to set up an accredited European School within the Ramiro de Maeztu school in Madrid is a small compendium of the usual modus operandi of the Ayuso Education Department. I do a unilateral project without asking anyone, I hide it as much as I can, when it is revealed, I tell lies and half-truths to the people involved and finally – this was the unexpected twist in the scenario – withdraw it in the face of protests. This is the story of 30 days of opacity, half-truths and works that no one understood.
30 interviews to review a course. The colleagues of El Diario de la Educación have compiled 30 interviews about the sector at this address with people of all types of profiles, who complement each other. You probably won’t be interested in all of them, but it will be rare that you are not interested in any of them.
That’s it for this first newsletter of the already rather long course. I welcome you again to this little space and encourage you to write to us to share your concerns or any issues you would like us to address. Next Tuesday, more.
Have a good week!
