Evaluate reality: a proposal against educational fiction

PalmaNow that we have finished the course, teachers and families have more time for reflection. It is necessary, because many of us teachers think we are living a great lie. It seems that the Administration has chosen to hide the true level of the institutes. Over time, and more by omission than by direct action, a standard has been set that the teaching staff unanimously consider "lowered", which devalues the degrees obtained. While school should mitigate inequalities and offer opportunities, different governments have opted to turn it into a curtain that hides reality. A fiction that covers up, especially in places like Ibiza, the drama of precarious employment and an impossible housing market; a context of growing individualism, which leads families to uprooting and disconnection from their towns and neighborhoods, as well as from their own language and culture.

That is why many of us see the need for a change of course that will restore dignity to the day-to-day of teaching practice, increasingly degraded by bureaucracy and parental pressure, and that will recover the role of the school as an agent for creating civic awareness, equality, and opportunities. We propose an idea here, sometimes despised by well-meaning pedagogy, which, along with other measures, we believe could improve the functioning of everything: external examinations. Due to obvious limitations, this text will not address other endemic problems that should be addressed jointly, with resources and radically, such as staff stability and the quality of facilities and infrastructure.

Currently, external evaluation in the public system is concretized in two ways: either in the IAQSE tests – diagnostic tests whose results are difficult to decipher and little able to provide timely solutions –, or in the selectivity exam (PAU). Curiously, the first time a student faces an external test with consequences is when they leave the system, when they finish. We propose introducing diagnostic tests in 2nd and 4th grade of primary school and in 2nd grade of ESO, and qualification tests in 6th grade of primary school and in 4th grade of ESO. Although Spanish legislation, through the LOMLOE, discards qualification tests and only provides for diagnostic ones, we believe there is a certain regulatory margin to introduce them as an essential criterion in qualification decisions at the regional level. These milestones would make the IAQSE redundant and would offer an objective, neutral, and external mirror, not perverted by the likes and dislikes of the teaching staff and the pressure of families, in which students would gradually get used to looking at themselves to reduce the constant claim that everything is owed to them without effort.

Furthermore, taking the weight of the final grade out of the teacher's hands transforms the relationship with students and families. The teacher ceases to be the enemy to be scrutinized or pressured and becomes the ally, the coach, in front of the test. Not taking advantage of classes, relying on the good nature of proximity, exceptional measures, and parental pressure ceases to be an option. Respect for the profession comes more naturally if this figure is not the one who finally qualifies us, but the only one who can help us overcome the stage.

Basic gaps

In this paradigm, the 2nd and 4th grade primary school tests and the 2nd year of ESO would have an informative and guiding role to detect basic gaps (reading comprehension or calculation) and apply reinforcements. If the results are poor in a school, they will have to be corrected in the medium term with more resources and pedagogical rethinking. This is how equity is pursued with asymmetric public resources where socioeconomic reality indicates it. This constant evaluation would make the 6th and 4th grade graduation tests authentic level certifications and the only thing that would justify repeating a year: "You stay for another year so you can get the degree, not at the whim of any teacher".

The model eliminates useless repetitions that degrade the classroom atmosphere in the final years of ESO and reduces the anxiety of facing Bachillerato and the PAU, which are too late a shock. Furthermore, it would allow students to be directed according to their academic profile towards alternative routes such as Diversification programs or Basic Vocational Training from the second year of ESO, thus avoiding frustrations.

Education cannot solve the harsh conditions of the labor and housing markets, but it has the obligation not to cover them up. The school's role cannot be to lower the standard to the point of turning the degree into a certificate of attendance and making it seem like nothing is happening. We must build a demanding and rigorous public school that moves away from individualism and helps those who need it without burning out teachers or deceiving families. For this reason, we need useful indicators to allocate resources asymmetrically, while maintaining rigor and excellence as a universal right, not as the sole patrimony of private education or exclusive programs that do not originate from Palma. Not acting in this direction is pure anesthesia, an exercise in self-satisfaction and institutional cynicism that the strikes of our colleagues in the Principality and the Valencian Country also help to combat.