The Spanish school does not perform as well as it should nor does it seem to encourage teachers and students. Children are enrolled in school very early in Children’s and then, in Primary and in the THAT, they have more hours of class than in other countries, but all that additional time in the classrooms is paradoxically not reflected later in the academic results, which are worse than average. Teachers are not rewarded if they work hard and there are 1.4 million young people who take their first steps in the world of work with a qualification below that required by the market because they fled the institute as soon as they could.
This is the x-ray that was taken yesterday Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in its annual macro report Education Overviewa job that puts us at the head of ninis (he 17% of young people neither study nor work, second only to Italy) and it also makes us proud for being the EU country with the highest proportion of poorly educated young people:
He 27% of the Spanish population aged 25 to 34 (32% of boys and 21% of girls) do not even have the Baccalaureate not even Medium Grade FP. They stopped studying when they finished compulsory education, at the age of 16, and since then they have not returned to training. This 27% translates into 1.4 million young people, according to figures from the INEwhich are cannon fodder for unemployment because these studies are the “minimum” that must be acquired to have “successful participation in the labor market,” according to the OECD.
It is no longer just that this proportion doubles the average (14%) of developed countries, but the rest of the training levels are also unbalanced. Because in Spain there are more young people with higher education (university and higher vocational training): 50% compared to 47% in the OECD. But, in exchange, there are fewer with intermediate training (Baccalaureate and Intermediate Vocational Training): 23% compared to the 39% that is registered in the average of countries. Francisco Lopez Ruperez, director of the Chair of Educational Policies at the Camilo José Cela University, warns that these data show that “decision-making bodies are not getting it right.” He proposes extending compulsory education from 16 to 18 years “promoting Dual FP in parallel.” It would not be a question of these students following traditional training, of spending six hours sitting at a desk, but of offering professional alternatives, including paid ones, linked to emerging jobs.
The report highlights that Spanish students have more hours of class than in the rest of the countries. Compulsory education (from six to 16 years old) includes a total of 7.925 hours, compared to the 7,194 average in the EU. Primary students have a 7,3% more than hours each course. In ESO, they represent a 20% more than the European average. The distribution of subjects is similar to that in other countries, but Spain has fewer hours of Language in Primary. «Teaching time does not bring better results. More than how much, we should think about how, with an education where every hour is time for real learning,” he reflects. Lucas Gortázar, director of Education at the EsadeEcPol think tank, who recalls that, especially in ESO, the number of teaching hours has grown in the last two decades (from 950 in 2003 to 1,057 now). This researcher explains that there are more and more subjects – “In ESO there are between 10 and 12 compared to the six or seven that exist in England” – because, “with each educational reform, no one wants to lose their part of the pie.”