The students who face the university entrance exams (PAU or EBAU) on June 4, 5 and 6 will be the last to have had to read books set by the Administration to test their language and Catalan and Spanish literature. Mercè Rodoreda (La plaça del Diamant), Joan Puig i Ferrater (Aigües encantades), Carmen Laforet (Nada and Buero Vallejo) will close the PAU stage as they are now known.
From June 2025, the tests, aligned with the new Lomloe education law that is already in force, the obligation to read a book of a certain title and author will disappear and young people will face exams of competence in which they will be evaluated for “literary education”.
During high school they will have read at least two books per course and language, chosen by the teachers at their school, but they will not necessarily be works of classic literature.
This decision has caused the astonishment of the teachers of Catalan and Spanish, who, instead of this news, expected that this month the Department of Education would delimit the readings in a list of mandatory books.
This list exists, both in Catalan and in Spanish, but it is only compulsory for high school students taking the Humanities and Social Sciences modality who have the subject of literature. For the rest, no. The Catalan teachers of Col·lectiu Pere IV, such as Carme Barragán, member of the board, are afraid that books will not be chosen from a classic canon, but from contemporary literary production, closer in taste to teenagers, but of dubious quality literary quality.
According to Education, the language and literature exam of the selectivity will respond to how the students have learned, with a competence approach. They will be asked, for example, to compare a fragment of a literary work (such as La plaça del Diamant, which they might not have read) with the readings of one of the two books they have done during the course, noting the differences or similarities between historical and cultural periods, literary and other resources.
According to the ministry, “the texts will not necessarily be the same that the students will have read, but they will serve to connect them with what they have learned in the readings done during the stage”, which will also allow to evaluate, critical thinking and reading comprehension.
To accompany the teaching staff, Education adds that it has developed a series of proposals for the centres, on proposals for guided readings and literary itineraries.
In any case, literary education is one of the aspects that are worked on in language and literature, a common subject for all students. And this is what teachers complain about, that literary culture is being pushed aside in favor of other knowledge, such as language, the acquisition of reading skills for other types of texts (journalistic, scientific… ) and reading comprehension. It is only one of the eight skills that are worked on in this subject.
According to the group of teachers, in Catalonia two hours of Catalan and two of Spanish are taught a week, unlike other autonomous regions, where four hours of Spanish are taught, or three of Catalan and two of Spanish. “We need, at least, one more hour a week to study literature well”, adds Barragán, who calls for more support materials and adequate training, especially for teachers who give classes and do not come from literary studies.