LOL Law

LOL Law

In today's Camino a Ítaca we take a look at the new education law and the (not) changes that have been introduced. Click over to read the original in Spanish published in el HOY or read the English version below. (PDF abajo) 

It’s been just over a month now since that typically Spanish matinal sound of backpacks rolling over sidewalk tiles returned to the soundscape of our cities. Have those of you with school aged children noticed a dramatic change?

Have those once burdensome backpacks filled with books been reduced to bring back and forth material for the different projects your kids are working on? Have you noticed an increased bounce in their step and willingness to go to school each day, glad that they no longer have to mindlessly copy out enunciados (instructions from their coursebooks) and complete worksheet after worksheet?

Have you witnessed a marked reduction in exams and that they do have no longer solely consist of regurgitating material that they have memorized, only to forget the next day? Have you noticed that their exams no longer are focused on mistakes, but rather concentrate on their achievements, however small they may be? Have you seen the shift away from a strictly quantitative evaluation, where the important thing was the final numerical result, to a more complete and qualitative evaluation, in which the objective is not only the numerical value, but the global learning obtained?

Have you been surprised at a new focus on self-improvement? One which allows students to make mistakes and learn from them, understanding that it is not necessarily a bad thing to make mistakes and that learning from mistakes is an essential step towards improvement.

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Remember the doom and gloom that was being forecast during the lead up to the change in the education law, the umpteenth reform since the return to democracy? Remember the fearmongering that this emphasis on competence-based education was going to mean that our kids would no longer know the names of the principal rivers in the country and never learn to count to ten?

Well, they needn’t have fretted so, because the law may have changed but age-old practices haven’t. It’s a peculiar trait here in Spain that I have always found curious. This quixotic practice of creating laws that look wonderful on paper, yet that no one has any real intention of complying with. The successive education laws are a perfect example. On paper Spain can boast one of the most modern, progessive, up-to-date education laws in the world. Yet in many classrooms children are still lining up to the teacher’s desk to get their copia (where they literally copy out instructions from coursebooks) corrected and learning that the world was created in seven days.

Have you ever seen your child come home with a purely competence based final assessment? It could be argued that it is still too early for the new law to be implemented, but key competences have been explicit in Spanish education laws since 2006 and were understood as capacities in the 90s. Yet why haven’t these changes taken place? It’s because the teachers themselves had to get their position via an equally atavistic process.

The system of oposciones are the antithesis of learning and competence based education. Until there is real and profound change in the way that teachers are chosen and then managed, observed and continuously trained, the laws can be changed ten times more but kids will still be suffering the copia.