Teachers outraged by the May competitive exams: “I will request leave to study”

Palm"All of us unfortunate souls who teach second-year Baccalaureate students will have to take our exams to Vera for grading." Phrases like this have been circulating in teachers' WhatsApp groups in recent hours. In this case, the author is a Social Sciences teacher who is taking the competitive exams this year and doesn't hide her anger at the Ministry of Education's decision to move the exams forward to May, a month earlier than usual. The other option was to hold them in October, with the drawback that those who passed wouldn't start teaching until the 2027-2028 school year.

The change of schedule has come as a complete shock to hundreds of teachers who have been preparing for the selection process for months—and, in many cases, years. For most, June was the final stretch of a marathon; May, on the other hand, is still a busy time in schools: final exams, resits, field trips, reports, and finalizing lesson plans. "They've changed the rules of the game on us mid-match," laments a secondary school teacher with over a decade of experience as a substitute. "Every day counts, and they've taken thirty away from us at once." There's also criticism of the unions at the negotiating table, who walked out and allowed the Regional Ministry of Education to choose the earliest possible date. "The unions got up and left instead of choosing the option of holding the exams in October, which is the result of the polls they themselves conducted. I don't know why they conduct them if they're not going to respect the majority vote. Thanks, unions. Greetings from a candidate who will be waiting a whole year."

The unease stems not only from the lost month, but also from the conditions under which it will have to be faced. Many candidates work as substitute teachers or in private schools. They study in the evenings, on weekends, and on holidays, often juggling family responsibilities. "Preparing for competitive exams is a Herculean task," says a special education teacher from Mallorca who is also taking the exam. "You sleep less, your mind is constantly on the lesson plans and topics. And now, on top of everything, they're asking us to compress the final stretch. Then they'll say too many people failed."

In classrooms, the fear is that the calendar will end up impacting the daily routine of schools. "May is the most delicate month of the school year. You have nervous students, final exams, the pressure of grades... If you add teachers with competitive exams just around the corner, the cocktail is explosive," warns a Catalan language teacher who prefers to remain anonymous. Some faculty groups are already talking about a complicated scenario, with requests for personal days, temporary workload reductions, or even sick leave to cope with the final stretch of studying. "It's not a threat, it's a foreseeable reality," says a teacher who has served on examination boards four times. "The pressure is enormous, and the system isn't designed to handle everything," he adds. In fact, some people are clear about their priorities. Studying comes first: "I'll go to the doctor and request sick leave so I have time to study," says a substitute teacher who claims that if she isn't granted leave, she will resign from her position. "They'll penalize me, but if everything goes well, next year I'll be a permanent civil servant. I don't care if they take me off the substitute teacher list," she says.

Among veteran candidates, the decision is seen as a risky gamble. "This is a meat grinder," says a math teacher from Mallorca. "If they wanted to make a quiet selection, they succeeded. There will be people who won't be in optimal condition," she adds. Others see it as a strictly organizational move, something the Ministry has consistently defended. "The goal is to have all the positions filled by September, and, granted, that's legitimate," admits a vocational training teacher. "But we pay the price, and indirectly, the schools do too. You can't talk about educational quality while you're squeezing the calendar to the limit," she argues.

Turning their backs on the teachers

The outrage also stems from the perception that the decision was made without consulting the teaching staff. "They ask us for vocation, innovation, emotional stability... but when it comes time to decide, nobody thinks about the real conditions under which we're fighting for our positions," criticizes a preschool teacher. "It's not just one less month. It's the feeling that we're just another piece being moved on the chessboard." Meanwhile, the debate intensifies in the hallways of secondary schools. Some principals acknowledge that May could become a particularly tense month if the official exams coincide with the preparation for the competitive exams. "The education system is already operating at its limit at the end of the school year. Adding this pressure is playing with fire," points out a member of a management team in the Tramuntana mountains. The word most often repeated among those preparing for the exams is "anxiety." Not so much because of the inherent difficulty of the exams—which no one disputes—but because of the feeling of having lost control of time. "They've given us a month of stress," a teacher summarizes with bitter irony. "And then they'll ask us to be calm in the classroom," he continues.

The regional education ministry argues that bringing the exams forward will streamline the process and ensure stability at the start of the next academic year. However, among the candidates, the interpretation is quite different: they believe the schedule, far from calming the system, could further strain it at the most critical time of the academic year. And if the number of failures increases this year (already high in June), the debate will focus not only on the candidates' qualifications but also on the amount of time they were given to demonstrate them. Meanwhile, once again, candidates will be taking the exams with syllabi from the 1990s and early 2000s—syllabi that make no mention of the internet but do refer to floppy disks.