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Spain Ministry of Education will eliminate this year's high school recovery exams

January 04, 2022

Original Article: https://elpais.com/sociedad/2021-11-12/educacion-eliminara-este-mismo-ano-los-examenes-de-recuperacion-de-secundaria.html

The original article requires translation.

This course there will be no make-up exams for Compulsory Secondary Education (ESO) students. The Ministry of Education is forced to end the repechage to comply with the opinion issued by the Council of State on this issue, according to sources from the department of Pilar Alegría this Friday. A day before, the advisory body had announced the change to the minister. Education ensures that there are no more significant changes in the opinion on the Royal Decree of Evaluation, Promotion and Qualification.

The Government intended that this course would not have repetitions, but several communities - led by Galicia, whose counselor spoke on the subject twice with the minister - demanded a moratorium to maintain them this academic year. The autonomous governments argued that the moratorium facilitated the organization of the centers, since the course plans were already underway. Alegría - wishing to relax relations with the regional governments of the PP after months of clashes with her predecessor, Isabel Celaá - thought the postponement was reasonable and so she let the autonomies know at the end of September.

However, the opinion of the Council of State, which must be complied with as it is "essential", forces the recoveries in ESO - they remain in the Baccalaureate - to end in all of Spain. The organism considers that inequalities would be created between the students of the different communities if some are examined and others not. The elimination of recoveries, which have been moving from September to June and July, is included in the royal decree that the Council of Ministers will approve next Tuesday.

The Valencian Community, Aragon and the Balearic Islands - both governed by the left - had already announced that there would be no recoveries, while other regions were resisting canceling them, such as the Basque Country. This is the case of the Galician Government, which considered going to court against the change, arguing that, having already started the course, the decision would alter the planned school calendar. Castilla y León also threatened to appeal. Or Madrid, which had requested the moratorium and that this Friday has not been spared the criticism from its counselor, Enrique Ossorio: "It is one more example of the chaotic and disorderly development that the Celaá law is having . "

The royal decree establishes that the teaching teams in a collegiate way will decide the grade and if the ESO student passes the course without taking a make-up exam for the subjects they have failed. Likewise, the text stipulates that the evaluation at this stage will be “continuous, formative and inclusive” and that reinforcement measures will be established when the student is lagging behind. The educational community agrees that exams, with a few weeks of study time, are of little use because adolescents fail again. That what has not been learned in nine months is not acquired in 15 days.

ESO students will pass the year when the teaching staff consider that the unsuccessful subjects do not prevent them from successfully continuing the following year and it is considered that they have favorable recovery expectations. Thus, the students who have acquired, in the opinion of the teachers, the established competencies and achieved the objectives of the stage will obtain the ESO title.

The latest education law (Lomloe) significantly modifies how evaluation, promotion and qualification are regulated and gives special relevance to the collegiate performance of the teaching team, who is given the ultimate responsibility for the decision to pass courses and obtain the degree. The Celaá lawputs the focus on reinforcement mechanisms. For this reason, it provides that permanence in the same course must be something exceptional that can only be adopted once during primary school and a maximum of two times during compulsory education. This is precisely one of the objectives of this new royal decree of development of the Lomloe: to avoid the repetition of courses, a matter in which Spain triples the rate of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD): a 28, 7% of 15-year-old Spaniards have repeated it at least once.

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