A 53% of Primary students would have a reading level below “desirable” or what is the same: more than half are unable to understand a text. The data is from I Situation Report on Reading Comprehension in Spain 2024, the first specific one in this matter that is carried out in our country. A total of 47,827 students from all over the country have participated in the study and personal variables of the students have been taken into account, such as gender and date of birth, and variables specific to the school and the socioeconomic background of the students.
In general, there are large differences between the participants and the great dispersion of the level within the classrooms with differences greater than 10 points is very notable. Only 4% of the students You have reached the maximum level, that is, 30 points, for the course you are in.
Girls read better and spend more time reading
In the gender variable, it is worth noting the difference between boys, who have scored an average of 23.1 at the national level, and girls, who have scored 23.7. Girls’ better reading comprehension level is demonstrated by most standardized tests. «This study demonstrates, once again, that, statistically and with equal conditions, Girls outperform boys in their level of reading comprehension. However, the new data provided by this test indicate that they spend more time to perform the test than children. This could be due to a more reflective process versus a more impulsive one in children, but it is a hypothesis that we will have to validate,” says María Jesús Palop, educational advisor at Proyecto Leobien, which prepared the report.
These differences between boys and girls occur in the three dimensions measured with the test: reading comprehension, listening comprehension and reading speedbeing somewhat more pronounced in the case of the last two, in which the proportion of girls who achieve the highest scores exceeds the proportion of boys who achieve those same scores by at least 2 points.
The type of center marks the most significant differences
The choice of center significantly marks the level of reading comprehension. In the Community of Madrid, students enrolled in private centers (concerted or not) reach a higher level of reading comprehensionwith 23.5 points on average out of 30, than those in public centers with 22.7 points on average. This difference increases in national terms, the reading comprehension of students from Spanish private schools being greaterwith 23.5 points on average, than that of public schools, with 22.4 on average.
At the national level, the choice of private or public centers is also associated with the average income level of the area. As has already been shown in various international research, performance in reading comprehension is related to the socioeconomic and cultural status of families. In this case, information about the student’s family has not been recorded, but rather the average income of the district in which the center is located has been analyzed. In this way, it is demonstrated that the areas with greater purchasing powereither They have students with better reading comprehension than lower income areas.
The month of birth, another variable
The month in which the student was born significantly marks his or her level of reading comprehension. The students born during the first trimester (from January to March) are the ones that stand out the most, obtaining the best score throughout the six Primary years, while those born in the last three months of the year obtain worse results.
This confirms what has already been established in other studies where it has been proven that the neurological development of certain areas that control language is different between a student born in January than another born in December that same year and who are in the same grade
Taking into account that, in Spain, there are educational centers in which teaching can be in Spanish, co-official or foreign languages, it is noted that the test has been carried out in Spanish language for all participants and that the comparison of means shows that there are no significant differences depending on whether the main language used in the classroom is Spanish or another.
It is important to highlight that the test has been voluntary for the participating educational centers. This could introduce a certain bias, due to their concern about the level of reading comprehension of their students, and suppose that the real average of the overall schools showed a real average that could even be lower to that offered by this study. For the next wave, we will work with the different regional administrations to try to reach the centers as a whole and offer this diagnostic tool universally.
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