The Ombudsman in Navarra has come to analyze a practice so widespread in some schools that it has gone unpunished to date. Following a mother’s complaint, he has compared the high school grades from some centers over the last six years with those of the university entrance exams (EvAU). The conclusion is that some schools are “inflating grades”, a “practice that can compromise the effectiveness of the principles of equality, merit and ability, which govern access to the university”. The report prepared by the office directed by Patxi Vera Donazar, who holds this position in Navarra, has pointed directly to the two Opus Dei schools in the foral community: Miravalles-El Redín and Irabia-Izaga.

The report of the Ombudsman in Navarra has been released through Cadena Ser and contains some eloquent data. As the Miravalles-El Redín school is the center that each year has the highest qualifications in baccalaureate, in the last six years it has reached positions seventeenth or eighteenth in the EvAU (specifically, it has been placed in positions 1, 3, 4, 10, 17 and 18). The differences are more notorious with regard to the Irabia-Izaga school: it is the center with the second best grades in Baccalaureate in all of Navarra, after Miravalles-El Redín, but in the years analyzed it has come to occupy position 33 in terms of refers to the grades in the EvAU (specifically, it has been placed in positions 7, 9, 14, 20, 23 and 33).

In other words, despite the fact that these two centers are the ones with the best high school grades year after year, they are far from being the ones that obtain the best results in the university entrance exam. A comparative grievance if one takes into account that in the entrance exams to public universities the grades obtained in high school count for 60%, while that of the EvAU counts for 40%.

“It does not seem reasonable that each and every year, without exception, the high school grade is the highest of all the centers, and that, when the EvAU arrives, this result does not have the same reflection,” says the Ombudsman’s office. of the Town of Navarre.

Faced with this situation, taking into account the mother’s complaint that has motivated this analysis, the Ombudsman has deemed it necessary to recommend to the Department of Education that it “ensure” that the baccalaureate qualifications awarded by educational centers do not compromise the principles of equality, merit and capacity that govern access to the university. Specifically, the institution directed by Patxi Vera requests that Education adopt measures to control the criteria established by each center when it comes to putting a note and especially recommends that it supervise “the actions of the schools to which reference has been made”.

Not surprisingly, the Education Department had transferred the mother who denounced the case that the schools have autonomy to “have the evaluation instruments they deem appropriate.” This situation, however, “is not incompatible with the possibility of establishing control over it, to the extent that there are indications that the rules and principles established in educational laws may be compromised,” according to the Ombudsman. Town.

It so happens that these schools have been in the news in recent months because they will lose the agreement with the Administration, since they have chosen to continue segregating by sex. That is to say, these two concerted schools to date will become totally private and will stop deciding public money unless they become mixed.