Zero out of two. After months of delay, the publication of some models of Selectivity exams by several autonomous communities has confirmed that this year’s test will not be common in the regions where the PP governs, as the party had promised, nor will it be competitive in practically no region, as required by law. The Ebau of 2025 will be very similar to those that took place pre-pandemic.
Reality is stubborn and after four months of insisting the house of cards has collapsed: the common Selectivity in which the PP put so much effort is not viable. And it is for the reasons that basically the entire educational community had already given: the autonomous powers in the matter made it impossible. It had been said by various groups, but the popular ones continued to do their thing: injustices will end when our autonomous communities implement a comparable test throughout the State, they said. The idea lasted as long as it took for the 0 exams to appear as an example. There is no common Ebau.
Because there is not, in the majority of the communities – whether they are from the PP or not – there will not even be a Competency Selectivity, which is supposed to be required by law. But the rectors already lowered the Government’s proposals in a meeting a month ago in which they defined what the test would be. At that meeting it was agreed that there would be a smooth transition from the usual rote exam to the competency exam advocated by Lomloe and the university officials established, with the approval of the communities, that only 25% of the exam would be competency. Even so, the majority has not complied and in communities like Madrid and many others there is no trace of competency questions.
“The majority of communities have directly reproduced the previous year’s model,” laments Próspero Morán, a secondary school teacher in Asturias and with a decade of experience as an Ebau corrector, in a complaint that is repeated by teachers throughout the state. “Some even published the same exam.”
The Ministry of Education does not seem very concerned about the issue despite criticism for inaction regarding non-compliance with its Royal Decree. Asked by this newspaper about the situation in Madrid, which does not comply with government regulations, a spokesperson explained that they do not intend to force the change of model and pointed out that the High State Inspection will act if anomalies are detected.
Common dates… and little else
The common PAU (in each community it is called something) of the PP has been limited to little more than the dates, some common correction criteria and little else. Not even the structure or something as apparently easy as scoring the same element the same will be equivalent in the seven communities where the popular ones govern, who announced their common test in a grandiloquent event that brought together all the barons with Alberto Núñez Feijóo last July.
But on October 10, the party sent a note admitting what the rest of Spain already knew in the summer. It wasn’t going to be possible. The first reason is that the Ministry of Education sets half of the curriculum on a state basis, but then each autonomous community complements the other half with the contents it considers appropriate to its reality, territory, etc. And with different syllabi you cannot take the same exam, unless you intend to ask only about the common part. This would lead the PP to a contradiction: after years protesting because the level has fallen, it would have to propose a test that would allow students to ignore half of the content when studying.
“History (…) is one of the most difficult subjects to homogenize,” the PP acknowledged in its note. “There are autonomous communities that included in their curriculum the study of all History and others only of Contemporary History (19th and 20th centuries). In this first phase, it has not yet been possible to change it since it was already predetermined from last year. For this reason, Contemporánea will be asked in the exams except in the communities that teach the previous stages, where they can be asked about them.”
Not even the structure or optionality of the test have ended up being the same. Murcia allows you to choose four of eight questions in one of the parts; in the other one topic for each of the two possible blocks. Madrid has divided the exam into three parts instead of two, with less choice. Galicia proposes four questions at a rate of 2.5 points each; Cantabria asks to develop a topic that is worth three points.
In Language there has not been harmonization either, although several communities have presented more similar exams. All have respected the 3.5 points of the text commentary agreed upon by the Popular Party, except Madrid, which goes up to 5. In fact, according to several experts, the Madrid exam does not comply with practically any of the Government’s provisions. But Murcia gives four points to the block dedicated to literary education while Andalusia stays at one and Cantabria does not ask about this issue. It happens with practically all subjects. The common Ebau will have to wait.
Where are the powers?
Teachers from all over the country are outraged because the communities have not respected the competency model proposed by the Government and demanded by Lomloe. Basically, they maintain, last year’s exams have been copied, reducing the optionality, after the course of the pandemic made the test more flexible so as not to harm the students.
The Royal Decree with which the Government established the basic characteristics that the Selectivity must have included the following phrase, a kind of summary of what it means to create a competency exam compared to a rote one: “The exercises will require creativity and thinking ability from the students.” critical, reflection and maturity in the written resolution of a series of questions or tasks appropriate to the specific competencies evaluated.” In most published tests there is no trace of questions that require any of these processes.
Elisa, a secondary school teacher, explains the difference between a competency test and another rote test: “The syntactic analysis of a sentence [que muchas comunidades han mantenido] It does not involve any reflection, it is a mechanical task. An example of a competency question in this area could be to pose two different press headlines about the same news item and ask the student to use their morphosyntactic knowledge to analyze why the two are different, how they were constructed and what they wanted to convey with each one. of them.
Another example: “In Literature you can ask the student to recite a previously memorized topic – without this showing that he has understood anything – or you can give him any text and ask him to analyze it, comment, highlight its artistic value, the resources used by the author or relate it to others.”
Almost none of this appears in the published evidence. Galicia is perhaps the community that has come closest. She was also the first to publish her models. To simplify the exam, it has presented the same structure in all subjects: four questions of 2.5 points each, the first of them of a competency nature, the rest not so much. At least it complies with those 25% of the competency tasks established by the CRUE.
Communities such as Castilla y León, the aforementioned Galicia or Euskadi have made an effort to include some competency questions. Madrid, none, like Murcia, Castilla-La Mancha or Cantabria. The Valencian Community, half, with a classic exam in Language, but a half-competitive one in Philosophy.
This subject is where some communities come closest to a competency model. It is also a subject that in principle lends itself more to this. For example, Asturias asks the student, based on a text by Descartes or one by Plato to choose from, to answer a question between: “If God does not exist, is everything permitted?” or “Is what we perceive reality?” He also asks about “Marx’s critique of capitalism” and asks that it be related to current examples.
The Castilla y León proposal also points towards competencies. For example, ask the student to put himself in the shoes of Thomas Aquinas to convince atheists of the existence of God, or ask a hypothetical philosophy expert to organize a debate for the school radio in which he explains in depth, but at the same time. once clarity, the positions of Plato and Aristotle.
The communities that have limited themselves to reproducing previous exams with small variations – Murcia, Madrid, Cantabria – have opted for classic structures, such as text analysis or the mere rote reproduction of philosophical theories.
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