The academic performance of students who study in bilingual public schools is superior to that of those who study in concerted centers in Compulsory Secondary Education but lower in the stage of Primary Education. This is reflected in the study ‘National Evaluation of Bilingual Education in Spain’ published by the Enseñanza Bilingüe association, to measure the level of academic language achieved by sixth grade Primary and fourth grade Secondary students.
A total of 2,202 sixth grade students and 1,546 fourth year ESO students from Cantabria, Castilla-La Mancha, La Rioja, Community of Madrid, Region of Murcia and Navarra. The test consisted of three different parts (Listening, Reading & Writing and Speaking).
The results indicate that students have not only developed linguistic skills in a foreign language, but have also acquired cognitive skills that allow them to process information “in a more effective and versatile way.”
“This reinforces the idea that bilingual learning, in addition to improving the ability to communicate in another language, positively impacts the way students think, solve problems and conceptualize content,” concludes the research.
Depending on the type of center (public or subsidized), in the Primary stage it is observed, in general terms, that subsidized centers slightly outperform public ones, with an average of 56.36 points versus 55.52 points respectively.
The data analyzed in the Secondary Education stage indicate that public centers show superior performance, with an average of 48.86 points compared to 46.26 points of the concerted centers.
Girls perform better
As for whether there is a difference in performance related to the sex of the participants, the results show a difference in favor of women at both educational levels, this difference being more pronounced in Primary.
At the Primary Education stage, girls obtain better results compared to boys, a trend that may be influenced by several factors, including differences in cognitive and emotional development at early ages, as well as possible variations in motivation and behavior. in the classroom.
At the Secondary level, although girls continue to outperform boys in academic performance, the difference is less pronounced than in Primary.
Regarding the evaluation of the use of cognitive-discursive functions (CDFs) in oral and written comprehension and oral and written production tasks, the study concludes that, at both educational levels, the data reflect that students have good management of the CDFs in oral and written comprehension and production tasks.
However, while in Listening and Reading the ease indices and grades have a generally positive trend, in Speaking and Writing there is greater variability in the results, especially in Primary, which suggests “the need to focus educational efforts on improving cohesion and discursive coherence in production, both oral and written, to standardize the development of these cognitive-discursive skills.
Comparison between communities
The report highlights that in Primary, students from Navarra, La Rioja, Castilla-La Mancha and Madrid have higher averages compared to Murcia and Cantabria. In this context, the study explains that communities with a greater number of bilingual centers, such as Navarra and Madrid, could benefit from greater exposure to language learning, which could be reflected in better academic results.
In Secondary, Cantabria and Castilla-La Mancha stand out for having the lowest performances, while Navarra stands out again as the community with the best results, reaffirming its leadership in academic performance.
In Primary, public centers Madrid and Murcia surpass those agreed upon by a considerable margin of 5.38 and 6.3 points, respectively. For its part, In La Rioja and Castilla-La Mancha, the difference between subsidized and public centers is minimal, not exceeding 2.5 points.
In the case of Cantabria and Navarra, subsidized centers outperform public ones by a much larger margin, with differences of 7 and 8 points, respectively, which could indicate greater effectiveness of subsidized centers in these regions, possibly due to factors such as administrative management, the availability of resources, or specific educational programs.
When breaking down the data for the Secondary stage, the study highlights that in Castilla-La Mancha, the differences between public and subsidized centers are similar to the general average, which indicates a consistent trend in this region. In Cantabria, although public centers also surpass subsidized ones, although the difference is minimal, which suggests that in this region both types of centers offer a more homogeneous level of educational quality.
On the other hand, in Madrid and Murcia, The advantage of public centers over subsidized ones is much more marked. In contrast, Navarra presents an opposite situation, where subsidized centers obtain significantly better results than public ones.
The study concludes that these results show that academic performance in Secondary not only depends on the type of center, but is also influenced by specific factors of each autonomous community. “Understanding the causes behind these differences is essential to design educational policies that promote equity and improve educational quality in all types of centers and regions,” he points out.
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