The Government approved last Tuesday the Royal Decree establishing the organization and minimum teaching of Compulsory Secondary Education (ESO), which details everything that students between the ages of 12 and 16 must learn on a compulsory basis throughout the country . These changes will be implemented in the 2022-2023 academic year for the 1st and 3rd years and in the 2023-2024 academic year for the 2nd and 4th years. The text proposes a “less rote” competence approach in which an applied and close-to-life learning of young people is prioritized.
The big loser has been Philosophy, which will disappear throughout the compulsory stage. It was of little use to Pedro Sánchez to promise his recovery in 2015. The PSOE has not only breached the agreement that it signed in Congress in 2018 together with the parties to reinforce Ethics in 4th ESO, but it has directly eliminated Philosophy. In return, the subject of Ethics and Values is introduced and accompanied by more practical subjects, such as Monographic Work, Community Services, Training and Personal and Professional Guidance, Digitization or Economy.
With this new Royal Decree, which develops the educational law (Lomloe), the promotion of students will not be determined by the number of failures, since the decision will remain in the hands of the teaching team, which will decide based on whether the student has ” favorable expectations of recovery”. In addition, numerical grades and make-up exams are eliminated. According to this text, a diagnostic evaluation will be developed in the 2nd year of ESO, with an informative and guiding nature for the centers, teachers and families. Also at the end of the 2nd year of ESO, a guidance advice will be given to the students with the degree of acquisition of competences and a proposal to continue the training. Finally, at the end of the stage, everyone will receive an official certification of the years studied and the level reached in the key competencies. Only if they have acquired these skills will they obtain the ESO Graduate title.
The other great change will be observed in the subject of History. In fact, it is the first time in all educational legislation that the Ministry of Education does not detail historical facts and the contents will be grouped into thematic blocks that are associated with various periods. In this way, in order not to fall into “academic approaches”, no mention is made of decisive moments such as the Conquest of America or the French Revolution, which were present in the Logse and LOE.
Opinion Division
Since the new ESO curriculum came to light, the educational community has been divided. The CCOO Teaching Federation has welcomed the competence approach with which the initiative is presented, as well as the flexibility of the evaluation. However, they consider it necessary to make a “greater effort” in teacher training to apply the educational reform and resume the debate on ratios. UGT is in this same line, but insists on the need to provide centers with adequate resources, such as a reduction in ratios, teaching hours for teachers, reinforcement of templates or the incorporation of new profiles.
CSIF maintains a more critical position considering that the educational system has not just improved. The group rejects that the curriculum is more competency-based, because it does so “at the expense of content”, pointing out that said competencies “cannot be achieved without memorizing concepts”. For its part, from Ceapa, the association of parents and students, they celebrate that continuous evaluation has been valued, considering that only in this way will a more equitable education be acquired and where the theoretical content does not weigh so much. The Association of Private and Independent Schools (Cicae) maintains this same line, which supports repetition as an “exception”. Finally, the National Catholic Confederation of Parents and Parents of Students (Concapa) has negatively assessed this start-up, since “it continues without betting on the culture of effort and work.”
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