School is possibly one of the most important stages in the education of any individual. The duration and structure of school time are fundamental aspects that directly influence the academic and personal development of students. According to the latest report provided by the Ministry of Education called Panorama of education, Spanish secondary school students receive “1,057 hours per year at school, 141 hours more than the OECD average.” In other words, Spanish students spend more hours in school than their European neighbors and, yet, our country leads the school dropout rate in the EU, which stands at 13.9% (between 18 and 25 years old). ).
Each European country has forged its own educational path, addressing the unique needs of its students and adapting to the changing demands of society. In Europe we can find everything from educational systems with long school days to more flexible approaches. But how many hours of school do they have in the rest of Europe?
One of the countries with the fewest teaching hours in its system is Finland, which has 600 hours on average per year in primary education and 808 in the first stage of secondary education. Norway follows closely with 753 hours in primary education on average and 874 in the first stage of secondary education. On the other hand, our Portuguese neighbors have 874 hours in primary school and 818 in secondary school, while Spain is one of the leaders in the ranking with 792 hours on average in primary school and 1,057 hours in secondary school.
In the OECD study published by the Ministry of Education Proposals for an action plan to reduce early school leaving in Spain this past June, the failure of the system in the education of students is characterized by several factors: high rate of school dropouts, an increase in teaching load that has been growing with each educational reform and an educational system with school holidays concentrated in the summer months. The report states that some measures to improve our system may involve distributing vacations throughout the year (as European neighbors do) to avoid mental fatigue or improve the quality of teachers. In this sense, the report is blunt: “Only 48% of compulsory secondary education teachers declared having received training on the content, pedagogy and classroom practice of the subjects they teach during initial teacher training, a “a percentage that is well below the average of 79% at the OECD level.”
