The draft of the new Secondary decree prepared by the Department of Education foresees that all ESO students will have four hours of Mathematics per week starting next year.
Thus, the future organization and curriculum of Compulsory Secondary Education (ESO) presents as the main novelty that all 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th ESO students receive four hours of Mathematics per week during the 2024-2025 academic year.
The general director of Educational Planning and Linguistic Policy, Ignacio Martínez, met this Thursday with the unions at the Sectoral Table and throughout this week and the beginning of next week he will convey the decree to students, subsidized centers and parents.
“The results of the latest PISA Report, in which the Valencian Community is in tenth position of the 17 autonomous communities, has made us take this measure to strengthen this matter,” justifies Ignacio Martínez in a statement.
This decree has other novelties, such as the recovery of Music in 3rd year with two hours per week, and the change in teaching hours, in response to the request of parents and teachers, going to 30 hours per week in 1st and 2nd years of ESO (currently are 30 and 32, respectively) and 32 hours in 3rd and 4th ESO (currently 33 at both levels).
Likewise, during the 2024-25 academic year, a new optional subject on Financial Education is introduced in 1st year of ESO called ‘Responsible finance and consumption’. “The objective is to complete the existing training itinerary with other electives in 2nd year of ESO (Social and Sustainable Entrepreneurship) and 3rd year of ESO (Economy Workshop), and with the optional subject of 4th year of ESO (Economy and Entrepreneurship), aimed at reinforce the financial education of students,” said the general director.
Foreign language reinforcement
Likewise, for the next course it is planned to teach four hours a week of Foreign Language in 1st and 2nd ESO, of which one hour must be dedicated exclusively to oral communicative competence. In 3rd and 4th years of ESO, in which the Foreign Language subject has a load of three hours per week, the optional Communicative Competence in First Foreign Language will be offered compulsorily, so the students who take it will have five hours of foreign language per week. .
On the other hand, the department headed by José Antonio Rovira is going to introduce numerical grades from 1 to 10 into ESO, which will complete the current literal grades. For the general director of Educational Planning and Language Policy, this measure “wants to give more complete information to families about the academic progress of their children and reward the students’ efforts.”
On the other hand, in compliance with the judicial rulings of the Superior Court of Justice of the Valencian Community (TSJCV) that annulled part of the regulation approved during the previous government of the Botànic, the interdisciplinary projects (IP) from 1st to 3rd of ESO are eliminated as a mandatory subject and the additional hour of Mathematics and Foreign Language, which the Ministry has already introduced for this 2023/2024 school year, is consolidated.
