The 50 Spanish public universities are very concerned about the way in which the Government is preparing the new Selectividad. They have even asked him to delay its start-up for a year because they see it as “unfeasible” to have everything ready to start the tests in June 2024, as established by the Ministries of Education and Universities. In a document of allegations, to which EL MUNDO has had access, the campuses denounce that they have been “ignored” and warn of the “growing signs of concern” that the high school teachers also communicate to them.
Those responsible for the organization of all the EBAU or EvAU (it is said differently depending on the territory) have drawn up a joint 18-page document with 20 technical problems that they have detected in the draft royal decree that regulates the Conditions for Access and Admission to University Degree Teaching. They have all come together to agree on the same document. In other words, they have worked “in a coordinated manner” to amend the proposal led by Pilar Alegría’s team, which was later joined by Joan Subirats’ department.
The Government’s draft, which was presented last summer, has been substantially transformed in the face of the rejection it has provoked. The first version involved a “considerable reduction” in content, according to complaints from language teachers, the RAE, the Institut d’Estudis Catalans or philosophers before a system where several subjects were combined in a “maturity test” that included many Multiple choice questions or to answer in a maximum of two paragraphs. Alegría agreed in December to postpone the final implementation phase of the test, from June 2027 to June 2028, but left the transitional phase as initially planned, starting in June 2024.
Afterwards, the text has continued to change and there is no longer a trace of that maturity test or of the peculiar test format. But campuses still see a lot of problems. To begin with, they believe that it is impossible to start in the 2023/24 academic year, as it appears in the draft of the royal decree. They explain that, after the publication of this regulation, which will foreseeably be approved before the summer, “the corresponding regulatory developments must be produced by each university and the adaptations of management procedures and corporate computer applications”, and “all this makes it completely unfeasible its start-up” in June 2024.
They state that “it would be disloyal not to mention the growing signs of concern” that are “transferred by the Baccalaureate teachers, counselors and harmonizers of the subjects, deeply concerned about the feasibility of implementing the competency model next year, since there are too many the unknowns and too little time to incorporate them into a Baccalaureate with new curricula, new subjects and an evaluation model never tried in the 2nd year of Baccalaureate and unknown to the eyes of those who have to give instructions from the universities on the specific guidelines of each subject ».
Those who have written the allegations explain that the ideal would have been for students to enroll in 1st year of Baccalaureate already knowing from the first day what the test in which their university future is at stake will be like. Because those who are now in that course are going to have to take a new Selectividad, in June 2024, with different rules of the game but having trained with mock exams of the old system. For example, they continue doing syntactic and morphological analysis or studying literary works for Spanish Language and Literature despite the fact that these contents have disappeared in the new format.
«They are creating a very harmful environment of anxiety and insecurity among high school students. We do not understand how rushed they are to implement a model that they have not yet tested, “summarize the sources, who suggest that the exam be postponed from June 2024 to June 2025.
The 50 universities have also seen that the new duration of the tests can cause problems: 105 minutes each, with a minimum break of 45 minutes, compared to the 90 minutes and 30 minute break that existed before. “It is an excessive time” that, in addition to producing “wear” on the students, will cause the tests to last one more day, which means extending them from three to four days in general, extending them to five days in the Autonomous Communities with co-official language and even extend them for six days for examinations of incidents, which requires reserving more than one week in the calendar. “Tests of such length compromise all subsequent deadlines,” they warn.
The Ministry of Education has said, to justify having extended the duration of the tests, that the transition from an evaluation by content to an evaluation by competencies requires that students need more time to respond. Those responsible for the universities object that “many of the issues currently raised in the tests have that nature of competence without this forcing an increase in duration.”
They also question the composition of the qualifying courts, where it is imposed that, in addition to university professors, there be 40% of institute officials who are specialists in each subject. They ask that this not be mandatory because, as the participation of these teachers is “voluntary”, it may happen that sometimes there are not enough officials and it is necessary to resort to temporary workers. If the current wording is not changed, students could “challenge in court” the exam when there is not the required number of officials, “which would create a serious problem.”
The campuses also question the new complaint mechanism for exams, which “involves a more than significant increase in viewings and exercises, which would make the procedure even longer, mobilizing many more material, personal and temporary resources unnecessarily.” The current system, they emphasize, “is more guaranteed, less bureaucratic and more agile” and “there is no objective reason for its modification, which makes the procedure more cumbersome for students, stressing deadlines.”
They warn, on the other hand, that certain requirements for vocational training students or those who already have university studies “will disorient the student body”. And they see some “incorrect allusion” to branches of knowledge that show that “universities have not been consulted” when drafting the regulations. «They confuse very basic things, such as the access phase and the admission phase. They will have consulted non-university teachers, but who have no experience in organizing tests. With us, of course, they have not counted, “they denounce.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
