Goodbye to teaching civil service exams? The educational MIR proposal gains strength

PalmaCan it be determined if a person will be a good teacher just because they have memorized a syllabus for months? More and more experts are answering no. At a time when the Balearic Islands, like countries across Europe, are facing a growing shortage of teachers, many universities and education professionals are proposing a far-reaching reform: to change the way future teachers and professors are trained, so that they learn the trade within the classrooms, accompanied by tutors and mentors, before entering public service. The proposal, inspired by the MIR for doctors, even opens the door to replacing competitive examinations with a year of paid professional induction subject to rigorous evaluation.

The initiative takes shape in the document The university and initial teacher training, prepared by the Palma Group, and also subtly appears in the document Islands for a Pact, the embryo of the Education Law (LEIB). The central idea is clear: if teachers are a key piece for the quality of the educational system, the way they are trained and selected must also be transformed. The promoters consider that the current model, based on memoristic opposition exams, has become outdated in the face of an increasingly complex and demanding profession.

The debate arrives at a particularly delicate moment. The Balearic Islands, like other European territories, have difficulties in covering certain specialties. For Miquel Oliver, a professor at the UIB's Faculty of Education, this shows that the problem goes far beyond opposition exams. "International research identifies nine causes for the teacher shortage. If we only solve salaries or ratios, we will fix very little," he warns. As he explains, initial teacher training and their entry into the profession must be reviewed from top to bottom.

The proposal involves replacing the competitive examinations with this professional induction period similar to the doctors' MIR. For a period of one year, new teachers would work in an educational center with a paid contract, accompanied by a tutor from the same center and a university mentor. At the end of the process, they would be evaluated and only those who demonstrated the necessary competencies would access public service.

Demonstration in vitro

For proponents of the reform, the main problem with the current system is that it evaluates candidates in an artificial situation, based on an exam and a defense before a tribunal, but which does not allow knowing how they will act when they have to manage a classroom, coordinate with colleagues, work with families, or adapt teaching to students with diverse needs. It is true that once approved, they are "probationary civil servants" for a year, but the mentoring is quite lax.

"Current tests only reproduce artificial situations, far removed from the reality of the classroom. It is a demonstration in vitro, not what you will actually do as a teacher", maintains Manel Perelló, former director of the Centre de Formació de Directors (CFIRDE). Along the same lines, the coordinator of the Col·legi de Docents de les Illes Balears, Antoni Salvà, considers that the oppositions select "the people who have the syllabus best prepared at that moment", but not necessarily "the best professionals". Therefore, he argues that the evaluation to access civil service should be based mainly on the actual practice of teaching and not on a one-off exam.

Another of the keys is to bring the university much closer to schools and institutes. The promoters of the proposal argue that centers should stop being simple practice spaces and assume an active role in the training of new professionals. "What doctor would refuse to train future doctors?", asks Oliver, convinced that experienced teachers must also be protagonists in this process.

The objective is not only to train better, but also to prevent new professionals from abandoning teaching shortly after starting. "What we do now is take novice teachers, send them to the most complicated centers and leave them alone," laments Oliver. The induction year, with tutors and continuous monitoring, should facilitate a much more gradual incorporation. Experts recall that this is not an unprecedented proposal. In several European countries, such as Germany, graduates undergo a long period of supervised internships before obtaining final certification. The weight of selection falls on the continuous evaluation of work within the classrooms and not on a memoristic eliminatory exam.

Goodbye to competitive examinations?

This approach inevitably opens the debate on the future of competitive examinations. Both Oliver and Perelló believe that if the induction period is sufficiently demanding and culminates in a rigorous evaluation, the current model would cease to make sense. "Competitive examinations should disappear," argues Oliver. Perelló also advocates for replacing them with a system that values professional competencies over time and not just performance in a single test.

According to the UIB professor, this change is legally possible if there is political will. He recalls that the Sectoral Conference on Education, which brings together the Ministry and the autonomous communities, could promote a reform of the system for access to the teaching profession. In fact, the secretary of Public Education of the STEI, Vicenç Garcia, explains that the Ministry has already created a working group to study possible changes.

Garcia shares the diagnosis and recalls that the current syllabi for competitive examinations "are absolutely obsolete", but he remains cautious about the teaching MIR. "The question is whether it will guarantee better teachers. Necessarily, no," he states. He also warns that a model of these characteristics could affect the current system of temporary appointments (it would make it unnecessary) and would force a redefinition of how new professionals join the centers.

A similar view is expressed by the spokesperson for the Teachers' Assembly, Miquel Àngel Ballester, who believes that the debate about competitive examinations cannot hide a deeper problem. "Competitive examinations are just the end of the pipe. The real problem is much earlier: fewer and fewer people are willing to be teachers," he states. As he explains, bureaucracy, high ratios, classroom conflict, loss of purchasing power, and lack of social prestige make it increasingly difficult to attract new professionals.

Despite the differences on what the model for accessing teaching should be, there is increasingly broad consensus on one aspect: the teaching profession needs a profound reform. The debate is no longer just whether competitive examinations should be modified, but whether it makes sense to continue selecting future teachers and professors with a memorization exam or if the time has come to evaluate them where their competence is truly tested: inside the classroom.