After having outlined last week some general lines of what, in the words of the Minister of Education, will be “the most ambitious course” in relation to the measures adopted, yesterday the axes on which the program will be developed were presented. Mellora Educational Plan of Galicia (Mega). Provisions focused on improving the teacher/student ratio in classrooms, as well as the responsiveness of teachers to the needs of students and with the clear intention of maintaining Galicia as a reference in terms of inclusiveness within its educational model.
During an event organized at the Cité de la Culture, the branch advisor, Romain Rodriguezin collaboration with the Director General of Educational Planning and Innovation, Judith Fernandezreported on some details of the so-called Mega Plan, which will consist of six key points: the Promote program, for the consideration of students with special needs; the PROA+ program, aimed at centers with the highest percentage of vulnerable students; strengthening written comprehension skills; the one focused on mathematics; educational support for foreign students and the promotion of centers considered as references.
An agreement that “It will mark a before and after” in the educational model Galician according to Rodríguez, who highlighted the participation of all social agents and presented the Mega Plan as the promoter of “the greatest modernization of the educational system in the last 30 years.” To achieve such progress, the regional program will have a budget of 77 million euros spread over the next four academic years and 400 new teachers, as previously announced by Education.
Promote the program
One of the pillars of the Mega plan will be the weighting of students with special needs by two or three depending on the medical reports proving their level of disability, dependency or serious behavioral disorder, in order to improve the response capacity of teachers.
In this way, the centres concerned will have additional teachers to meet the specific needs of these students from the start of the school year on 11 September. A measure that will allow the Galician education system to maintain at the forefront of inclusivity in Spain, as indicated by education officials with reference to the results of the PISA report.
PROA+ call
In addition, the call for the PROA+ program will be published today, aimed at centers with the highest percentage of vulnerable students due to socio-educational problems, “for strengthen equity and equal opportunities“, they indicated from the Ministry. The program includes the incorporation of specialists in areas such as hearing and language, as well as in therapeutic pedagogy, who will be integrated throughout the month of October.
Measures that will be carried out individually in each of the centers, after obtaining the results of the evaluations carried out last April in which 19,061 primary school students from 809 educational centers and 21,615 ESO students from 476 institutes participated. For this, it is analyzed students’ skills in different areas of knowledgethe solvency with which they cover them and which curricular aspects present the most difficulties, in addition to those in which students demonstrate greater abilities.
The educational centers have already received the personalized report, as reported by the Ministry of Education, so that each of them can analyze their strengths and weaknesses, based on whichand the centres themselves will develop an improvement plan for which they will benefit from the support of the Ministry. Likewise, the educational space of the Xunta will prepare a guide for the design of improvement plans that will be made available to the centers to guide them in their execution.
Key skills
Skills assessments will also be used in improvement plans. reading comprehension and mathematicswhich will include specific measures with the school library as the “backbone” as specified by the department. To this end, a “comprehensive teacher training action will be proposed to those who coordinate the reading plans of the centers”, as well as the methodologies used in the reading and writing process in the classrooms.
In the case of mathematical skills, the measures presented so far by the Ministry are less specific. According to Education, “the learning process will be supported and adapted to each person’s way of learning”. To this end, “good practices in this area” will be identified and disseminated, which will be made available to educational centers to improve academic results in this discipline.
foreign students
Another of the main points of the Mega plan is the support for foreign students, being Galicia, the second community with the lowest percentage in this aspect. The Xunta indicated that it intends to “preempt” this “challenge” by developing a specific program aimed at these students. “The educational interventions necessary for the academic, personal, cultural and social development of these students will be organized through active participation in school life,” the ministry said.
Finally, the Mega package includes the “promotion of reference centers“, for which it will reformulate the approach of the old program contracts and promote the implementation of initiatives that serve as an example to other centers on issues such as “sustainability, inclusion, emotional well-being and coexistence, among other aspects.”
