The Government has informed the autonomous communities that it postpones until 2025 the entry into force of the new selectivity (EBAU) that was scheduled to take place in June 2024 to adapt to the new competence curriculum for high school.
“We have understood that with a government in office we could not generate new regulations that will condition what the incoming government wants to do”, explained the Secretary of State for Education, José Manuel Bar, who also met with the Conference of Guiding (Crue).
“We wanted to convey peace of mind, certainty and confidence to the boys and girls who had to take the exam next June and, therefore, from the very beginning of the course they will know which access test model they will take and give them more confidence”, has added. “A new regulation will not fall to them in the middle of the course.”
The Ministry of Education and Vocational Training had left in the drawer the decree already drawn up and in its last step on the new model of the EBAU before the proximity of the general elections. It was then said that the government that came out of the polls would approve or change it, but it was not expected that the constitution of a new Executive branch would take months after the voting.
The royal decree was already very fair since it had to change the 2024 selectivity evaluation model, that is, for students who are starting 2nd year of high school this September. The Government decided not to present the royal decree before dissolving itself, perhaps driven by the controversy that would be associated with it. It should be remembered that the PP demanded a single evaluation throughout the Spanish territory, an aspect that the autonomies with non-conservative governments refused and that defended the autonomic competences in education.
The teachers were, in turn, concerned about the imminence of a short course without being certain (yes, some changes had been explained) of how the exams would be carried out and, therefore, how they should prepare their students.
Now, a legal report requested by the ministry concludes that the acting government cannot approve a decree of such characteristics. The possibility that the constitution of a government is delayed or, even, that the general elections could be repeated, would entail great pressure for students and high school teachers. They could not prepare for the new test pattern.
In the most extreme scenario, that of repetition, it would place a new Executive in the month of January or February, assuming that the resulting vote gave a more comfortable majority to the winning party to govern. This gives a break to the educational world.
The Generalitat agrees with this postponement. In fact, Minister Joaquim Nadal three weeks ago requested a period of two years from the moment the contents and the type of questions are approved. These two years would serve to begin to train students who start first year of high school in accordance with the new selectivity.
“Those who are in the second year will continue to take the old university entrance exams (PAU) and those in the first year, if there is a new model, will take the new ones in 2025,” the minister said at the beginning of August.
It was planned, from the last draft planned, that the tests would change this year by introducing questions with a more competency-based approach and lengthening each test by 15 minutes. Whether or not the model changes will be implemented will be decided by the new incoming government. “We left all our homework done, we had the draft of the order, but we understood that this decision corresponds to the new government,” Bar said.
The decision also benefits those educational centers that are further behind in the application of the new Lomloe curriculum. The Departamet d’Educació gave educational centers a period of three years to adapt to the new Spanish education law and the competency curricula derived from it (50% prepared by the ministry and the other 50% by the regional administration ).
This postponement implies that the dates established in the Lomloe calendar, an organic law approved by the Congress of Deputies in 2020, are not met and indicates that the new test model, corresponding to the new competency curricula, must be carried out at the end of the second high school year in which these have been implemented.
This is the first temporary delay regarding the tests, which have also seen modifications to the model initially designed by the ministry. This included a maturity test in which a series of areas of knowledge were evaluated, the application of which has been postponed to June 2028.
Initially, the ministry’s proposal consisted of students doing a total of 4 exercises, all of them with the same weighting (25% each). Three subject exercises: one specific on the subject of compulsory modality of the one chosen by the student, in addition to the exercises of the common subjects of History of Philosophy and History of Spain.
And a fourth exercise of a general nature in which in these first three courses the skills associated with the linguistic field, and the academic maturity of the students, would be valued mainly.
As of the 2026-2027 academic year, the general maturity exercise would have the desired final weighting (75%), completely replacing the common subject exercises, since it would be built on the specific competencies of all of them. And the modality-specific exercise would be maintained (with a weight of 25%).
The idea of ??subtracting the weight of memory and of concentrating subjects, already evaluated in the institutes, in an exam of academic maturity (capacity for synthesis, association, expression… etc.) was well received by a part of the group of teachers eager to reduce the importance of the selectivity that families and students give and that conditions the way of teaching. Take the stress out of some knowledge exams on which the centers have already evaluated.
However, the regional governments exposed the need to slow down this calendar to give schools more time to adapt to a more competent and less rote teaching. Communities with their own language and scientific societies from various fields of knowledge also complained about the loss of presence of their subjects in the selectivity.
A new progressivity calendar was approved, introducing few changes this year but making progress in the competency approach.
