The Spanish Government maintains the structure, subjects and dates of the university entrance exams (PAU, ABAU or AVAU) as in previous courses. There will be the same number of exams as before and students will be able to choose between history and philosophy. “Minimal changes” will be introduced, since the students who will take these exams in June 2024 will have already completed the high school with the competency-based curriculum derived from the socialist education law. Also, the AVAU incorporates sciences for students who have taken the general modality high school.
Yesterday the Ministry of Education and FP met with the autonomous communities to make them aware of the draft of the order that regulates the AVAU. Precisely, the councillors, among them, the Catalan councilor Quim Nadal, had asked that the changes be postponed for a year because, as they were not regulated and with the Executive in office, there was no time to prepare the students.
The minimal changes refer to the type of questions in the exams, of a more competitive nature, so that it corresponds to the way in which the students of this promotion have learned. It should be remembered that students in their 2nd year of high school have already studied with the curricula of the Lomloe socialist law, approved in 2020 and which introduces this approach.
Likewise, students in some autonomous communities, such as Catalonia, are already familiar with these approaches. For example, in biology, the student can be asked to find and use reliable sources, to identify, select and organize certain information, and to critically evaluate it and contrast its veracity. Or in art history, ask him questions to assess whether the student distinguishes and analyzes the religious, ideological, political, social, economic and expressive and specifically aesthetic functions and dimensions of the works.
The central government prepared in June the draft of the royal decree with the new design of the tests (fewer subjects, shorter, with more time to answer and, above all, more competitive), and had previously postponed the so-called ” maturity test” at the request of the autonomous communities. But the decree could not be approved because of the election results.
The exams maintain the same number of subjects as in previous courses: the compulsory one for the modality and three for commons (four in the case of autonomous communities with a co-official language). Students will be examined in Spanish language and literature, foreign language, co-official language and the specific mandatory subject of the modality. And they can choose between the history of Spain or the history of philosophy. In order to raise the university admission mark, they can take two subjects in the second year of high school.
Likewise, students may take a second foreign language exam other than the one they have taken as a common subject and the grade may be taken into account by the universities in the admissions process. In this course, for the first time, students who have completed the new general high school system, introduced by the Education law approved in 2020, will take the test.
