The new Baccalaureate of Excellence, under debate: "Schools will compete to get students into it"

PalmaSeparate students with the best grades from the rest of the students to create an Excellence Bachelor's itinerary. This is the bet of the Department of Education and Universities for the 2026-2027 academic year, which has raised alarms among pedagogues, teachers, and families, who see it as a new step towards educational segregation and a model that questions the idea of inclusive education promoted in recent years. "'Excellent' students must coexist with the rest, because society is like that: diverse," summarizes Joan Jordi Muntaner, doctor in Pedagogy from the UIB. "Contact, relationship, and exchange with diverse people enrich, because the 'good ones' are a model for the rest. Grouping students just because they have a very high performance, is that the only objective?", he asks. With this Bachelor's degree comes a new form of student segregation, which is added to the linguistic one and to the one that will occur with the implementation of the single zone in most of the municipalities of the Balearic Islands.

The new program will start with 130 places distributed among Mallorca, Menorca, and Ibiza. The new IES Llorenç Villalonga that will be installed in Sa Riera will concentrate the majority of the offer with 70 places and two lines of first year of Baccalaureate. In Menorca there will be an excellence classroom with 30 places, and in Ibiza another one, also with 30 places.

The Ministry defends the project as a response to stimulate talent and effort and to offer more in-depth training to students with better performance, but when asked about the Government's support to promote it, the institution questions that anyone's support is needed. The decree establishes a methodology based on research, critical reflection, and autonomous work, with laboratory practices, essay writing, and an environment similar to higher education. In this first phase, the modalities of Science and Technology, and Humanities and Social Sciences can be studied, with the forecast of incorporating the modality of Arts later on. It is foreseen that young people can study two itineraries at the same time. The community of Madrid, Aragon, and Castile and Leon, among other autonomies, have more or less similar programs. Isabel Ayuso's Program of Excellence in Baccalaureate is, in any case, the most similar to what the Balearic Islands are promoting.

Knowledge and competition

There are brilliant students who see real opportunities. Fèlix Coll, a former student of IES Biel Martí in Ferreries and one of the best scores in the 2025 selectivity exam, with a 9.35 unweighted score, considers that the program can be “a good idea, especially in terms of learning and expanding knowledge”. “Having the option to delve deeper into subjects, conduct laboratory practices, and have the possibility of taking a double modality is an opportunity that greatly enriches and can open more doors for the university future”, he states. “I would have liked to have such an option”, he says.

However, the same student also introduces nuances. “Bachillerato, and especially the second year, is already a very intense stage”, he warns. “If you want to get high grades to enter the career you want to pursue, the pressure is already enormous”. For this reason, he doubts how the increase in demands will fit with the competition for cutoff grades. “I am not very clear whether adding more content and more demands would really help to raise grades or if, even, it could generate even more stress for students”, he says.

The program's philosophy divides the educational community. “It is an old and conservative idea, which starts from the idea that ‘the good with the good work better’, which is not necessarily true”, states Muntaner. “Real enrichment comes from contact with diverse people”. The pedagogue even questions the need for a separate itinerary. “These students have already demonstrated cognitive and work capacity. If during ESO they have already shown excellent skills, special treatment is not necessary. They will also be excellent later on. Deepening should be done at university, not at Baccalaureate”, he sentences.

The awardees and the best grades

The program access system establishes a clear filter. Priority will be given to students who win the new Extraordinary ESO awards, a call that the Ministry is promoting for the first time. The tests will be held on May 28 and will include four exams: mathematics, English, historical commentary in Catalan, and scientific commentary in Spanish. To enter, students must have completed all of ESO in Spain, be enrolled in the fourth year of ESO in the Balearic Islands, and have a minimum grade of 9.35 in the third year of ESO. The eight best students will receive 500 euros. After the awardees, students who have obtained at least an 8 in the tests will be able to access, and finally those who have a minimum average of 8 in the fourth year of ESO.

In the Pitiusas, the debate incorporates a territorial dimension. Francisco Tienda, director of IES Quartó de Portmany and president of the Association of Directors of Secondary Education and Special Regime of the Pitiusas, explains that they have already received inquiries from families interested in the Extraordinary awards and the new itinerary. "We have explained to them that it is designed for students with a high academic record and that they will work with methodologies more typical of university. However, when they saw that this implies going to another center, they did not like it very much," he says.

The debate arrives at a particularly complex moment for public education, with high ratios and structural lack of resources

Criticisms extend beyond academic criteria and point to a structural effect: the reproduction of inequalities. “Which students will be able to access these notes? Which socio-family environment truly facilitates achieving these results?”, asks Kiko López, president of the UCTAIB's Teaching sector. “In reality, it deepens social inequalities”, he opines. Another fact that worries some subsidized schools is the possibility of losing students, as they need to maintain minimum ratios to keep their subsidies and receive public funds. However, the position of the subsidized sector is not unified: The Confederation of Teaching Centers (CECEIB), representing more than twenty Subsidized Centers (CC), celebrates “any measure that rewards excellence” and asks that, if the project works well in public schools, it should then be transferred to subsidized centers.

On the other hand, López warns of the risk of consolidating an elitist logic within the educational system. “There will be families who think their children are wasting their time in ordinary classrooms and need special attention”, he says. “An elite is being fostered that could perhaps be trained equally in the private sphere, but is now financed with public money”, he adds. For the cooperatives' representative, the key is the very meaning of inclusive education. “This is not the basis of inclusive education”, he argues. “Real inclusion means being in diverse and representative contexts of current society, not within bubbles”.

And the structural problems?

The debate arrives at a particularly complex moment for public education, with high ratios and a structural lack of resources. “I would accept an ultra-demanding and segregating Baccalaureate if, among many other things, we had adequate ratios and good guidance services with sufficient staff beforehand”, states professor Tonina Siquier, from IES Sineu. “This year I have 29 students in the first year of ESO, and that is a lot. What can I really do to attend to all the casuistries? Very little, if anything”, she laments.

Siquier places the conflict in political priorities. “When all this is resolved, we can talk about Llorenç Villalonga. But while they come up with measures to favor those who are already doing well because public education is degraded… then they should remember that public education is degraded precisely because the Ministry does not allocate the necessary resources to it. We do all we can”, she argues.

Consulted sources see the project as a possible step towards a dual education system. “It will generate competition between schools to place their students there,” warns Siquier. “Education should not go this way. It should be about reducing school dropout and properly attending to everyone, not about having four students who end up going to Llorenç Villalonga.” And he adds: “All schools like to send many students to the Selectivitat and get honors. There are institutes that go crazy with this, imagine if they now open another battlefield to place students in an elite center,” he explains.

Schools seek excellence

Families also express doubts regarding this issue. Xavier Ferriol is president of FAPA Mallorca and of the Apima of IES Joan Alcover, one of the schools in Palma that has traditionally achieved the best academic results. He describes what could happen with a comparison: "It's like we are a ship that is working and they put another one next to us that steals our crewmen," he says. Ferriol questions the purpose of the project. "What happens? Do the rest of the schoolsnot seek excellence? Are they mediocre? That's what is implied," he laments. He also warns that the project is born without a defined educational project.

The defenders of the program (PP, Vox, and CECEIB, among others) argue that it can prevent the demotivation of students with higher performance within the ordinary system. However, critics consider that the problem is not the neglect of excellence, but the lack of general resources for the entire system. "Fortunately, there are many good students and not all of them will be able to enter, and they will remain with us," celebrates Siquier.

To understand the core of the debate, we must move beyond the specific case and shift the perspective. “What is being proposed is not the same as separating students with disabilities, which everyone would see as wrong, but it follows a logic of segregation,” states Muntaner. The debate, he says, is not about what one wants to protect –talent, rigor, or performance–, but about what model of school is being built when pathways that separate are drawn. “When we talk about excellence, everyone says they want it. But this separation is not necessarily positive, neither for those who supposedly have it nor for an educational system that is already very affected by structural problems.” The question that remains open is whether this new approach will serve to strengthen education or, on the contrary, to draw a new invisible line of socioeconomic segregation in an already very collapsed educational context.