The percentage of students who passed the university entrance exams last year was 93.9%, the highest figure in the history of these exams, which were born in the early seventies so that applicants “sufficiently accredit the vocation, knowledge and preparation necessary in order to ensure the effectiveness of teaching at these levels”. That almost 94% is the global percentage, adding the results compiled by this newspaper from the ordinary exams (which 95.9% passed) and the repechage exams (78.4%). In total, almost 240,000 students applied, of which 224,977 passed the cut.
They did so after facing a selectivity exam (in its classic name, today better known as EBAU) with rules relaxed by the context of the pandemic: instead of choosing between two exam models in each test as in previous years (each with four questions), the students had eight questions among which they could answer the four they wanted. Javier M. Valle, professor of comparative education at the Autonomous University of Madrid, believes that, in addition, there has been a tendency to facilitate tests for students also in what refers to “the specific choice of [las preguntas de] exams” and “the evaluation criteria of the correctors themselves”. Alejandro Veas, professor of Evolutionary and Didactic Psychology at the University of Alicante, also believes that the results of an improvement in the way of teaching in high school are being seen, thanks to the promotion of permanent training and the generational change initiated in the faculty. “There is a greater connection between the way subjects are being taught and the way the student likes to learn,” he says.
That favorable context that Valle and Veas talk about was very similar in 2020, when this simpler selectivity format was launched for the first time. However, then the percentage of passes did not grow, but rather fell slightly compared to the previous year, going from 92.3% to 92%. It must be taken into account that the students came to that test after two months of strict confinement and a quarter of closure of educational centers. In addition, the redesign of the test was not released until April, so neither students nor faculty had much time to specifically prepare the new model. And, probably what had the most influence, the number of kids who applied increased a lot: 243,217 were examined (20,195 more students than in 2019 and 8,637 more than in 2021), due to the call of the educational authorities for the institutes to be lenient in the final evaluation of the baccalaureate with the students to compensate for the emergency situation they had experienced.
In general, the decision to soften the test due to the extra difficulties that the pandemic is putting in the way of students has not been much discussed. Ismael Sanz, Professor of Economics at the Rey Juan Carlos University, recalled in these pages, in an article on the spectacular drop in early school leaving in 2021, a study by two professors at the London School of Economics that in 2008 showed that during mobilizations of May 68, in France, promotion and access to university was also facilitated. “They analyzed the trajectory of young people who probably would not have entered university under other circumstances and followed them over time. And what they observed is that these students had a good academic performance later and in the labor market”.
What many specialists do question is the test itself, either because of the injustice that the difference in difficulty of examinations of the same subjects in different communities can entail —“there are still imbalances,” says Veas—, or because of their mere existence , as Professor Valle puts it: “No one likes it anymore, nor is it useful for anything. It doesn’t convince teachers, or students, or parents, or universities…”, he assures.
A test discussed from the first day
Selectivity has indeed been a contested test since day one, but a lack of consensus around alternatives has kept it alive for nearly five decades. Many specialists defend that its elimination would generate more problems, due to its equalizing effect on the qualifications of the students.
The percentage of passes, on the other hand, has been increasing progressively since the current university access system was implemented in the 1970s. In that decade, the percentage did not reach 70% (the year 1978 was especially hard; only 45.8% passed). From then on, the proportion grew slowly, although a full comparison with what happens today is only possible from the year 2010, when the percentage of passes out of those taking the exam begins to be available (previously the percentage that can be consulted is the number of students passed over those enrolled in the test, which is always a little lower).
Javier M. Valle rejects frequent arguments in favor of these tests. For example, he refers to the fear that private schools can inflate the grades of their high school students, so that they are in a better position to access the most demanded careers: “The average grade of the students of the private [en selectividad] it is higher than that of the public ones, their grades are not inflated, ”defends Valle. Likewise, he emphasizes that the organization of university entrance exams is very expensive and that, with pass rates above 90%, they do not serve to select the students who enter the campus. He admits, yes, his work to order university entrance through average grades —when there are more applicants than places to enter a public university career, those with the best grades enter—, but he prefers other alternatives, how to take into account the qualifications of years prior to high school. Or divide the test into more than one course, taking, for example, an exam in the first year and another in the second year of high school. “There is a lack of audacity, there is a lack of educational courage and there is a lack of consensus to carry out regulations that truly change things. That is why nothing has been changed, because nobody agrees on how to change it”, he concludes.
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