October 26 is the deadline. The Ministries of Education and Universities have committed this Monday that the new selectivity exams will be known that day, according to the Students’ Union after meeting with representatives of the departments led by Pilar Alegría and Diana Morant. The student organization explains in a memo that it has called for protests in recent weeks because of the little information it has as of mid-October about what the university entrance exam will be. The types of exams should therefore begin to be available this week and Education will ask the communities – which currently have the power – not to exceed the aforementioned day, so that teachers and students can work on this subject.
“This result is a great triumph for the organized student movement,” says the Students’ Union, which brought thousands of young people to the streets in two recent demonstrations across the country. After the success, according to her, of the meeting, the general secretary of the organization, Coral Latorre, explained that the demonstration planned for next Friday was canceled, even though she had announced that she would take to the streets. once again if this Monday 14th the exams were not known. They finally accepted the ministry’s commitment almost two weeks ago.
Young people in the 2nd year of their baccalaureate (and some in intermediate professional training) are worried because this course modifies the exam which gives access to the University and, they say, they teach the courses “blind” because they don’t. know what they have to prepare, which is the fundamental occupation of this last year of post-compulsory secondary school.
With the Government’s commitment, students will be able to start preparing for the exam with specific material. Some communities, like Galicia, were ahead of others and have already published some examples.
Juan Manuel Moreno, professor of didactics at UNED, believes that the students are half right. “If you put yourself in their place, the decree is not enough [de mínimos del Gobierno]. But if the requirement is what goes into the exam, that is known. Protests would not be justified there,” he explains, referring to the agenda included in the curriculum vitae. “What is unclear and makes sense of the complaints is that the format of the exam is not known. One thing is what is included in the review and another is how you are going to ask me. A multiple-choice test is not the same as an answer to be developed over four pages,” he reflects.
From government to communities
After a few years of doubts and back-and-forths in its proposals, the government finally approved the baselines of the test last June. These are only general indications – this is the part that corresponds to them – such as the number of trials (between four and nine) or their duration. Additionally, for example, there will not be two different exams for students to choose one, as is currently the case, or that up to 10% of the grade depends on style, grammatical accuracy , consistency, etc. of a text.
But these generalities do not allow us to have an idea of what the exam will be like and must be based on a specific exam model in a second phase, which takes place halfway between the Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities (CRUE) and the autonomous communities, those who take the exam and have the final skills.
We are at this point. The CRUE has already made its test proposal, which will be quite similar to the final model although it is not yet final. This course will constitute the transition from the usual Ebau to a model that adapts to Lomloe and evaluates the learning of the skills it advocates, even if for the moment it will do so in a somewhat timid way.
The test proposed by the CRUE for this course limits this part of competence to a minimum of between 20% and 25% of the questions, despite the fact that the text itself specifies that “the tests will have a conception of skills to verify the degree success in specific skills in access and admission subjects.
University officials are also opening the door to the inclusion of questions in various formats, more or less open, “as long as the mark awarded to the questions/tasks with open and semi-constructed response reaches at least 70%”.
For the rest, another of the changes made to the exam, one of those that can most homogenize the exam at the national level as required by the PP, is to establish correction criteria common to the entire State, which will also be included in the new test.
