2023-12-16 22:32:42
BarcelonaThe poor results in the PISA report have shaken the entire Catalan education system and, although the Minister of Education, Anna Simó, has wanted to remove all the blame for the drop in standards from the teachers, assuring that “responsibility it must always take the coach and not the players”, the doubts about whether the system knows how to prepare the teachers well enough have been put back on the table.
“If anything, we know that it is not efficient enough to pass with a good level performance tests like PISA. A trade unionist would tell you that it is because the working conditions of teachers are not good and an expert would tell you that the initial training of teachers is deficient and, probably, both theses are true”, explains the professor emeritus of the University of Barcelona, Joaquim Prats, who has specialized in the analysis of educational systems. But what do we know about the training and professional career of a Catalan teacher or teacher?
Can everyone be a teacher?
More than 2,500 students enter to do a degree each year
In Catalonia, the cutoff mark for a master’s degree is between 5 and 9.6 out of 14, depending on the faculty. In addition, since 2017 to be able to access public universities (recently private ones have discarded the measure), all future teachers must pass the Personal Aptitude Tests (PAP), a filter that suspends approximately half of applicants and which, many times they do it because of the low level of mathematics and Catalan.
Personal aptitude tests for teachers
Kindergarten and primary education degrees. Ordinary calls
Despite this filter, each year more than 2,500 students enter a degree to become a teacher and, according to data from the University Quality Agency (AQU), each year more than 95% of the university credits are approved and less than 3% of students drop out of the degree. “In a university degree there are two examples of failure: when the majority fail, as happens with mathematics, and when almost everyone passes, as happens in the qualifications to become a teacher”, warns Prats, who compares the situation with that of countries such as Finland, where less than 10% of students who want to become teachers succeed.
With the passed degree, you can already be an interim teacher, but in order to have a stable position, the teacher must pass exams. A process which, according to the director of the Center for Pedagogical Resources (CRP) of Sant Martí and member of Clam Educatiu, Noa Padín, “does not offer enough guarantees when it comes to incorporating the most competent and committed teachers into the public system”. In the same sense, Prats assures that these tests to access a civil servant position benefit more those who have been acting for many years without having passed any test, than those who are better prepared.
Teach to teach
The teaching plans reinforce the didactics more and more
“Before we had teachers with a lot of knowledge, but no notions of how to teach, and now we have young people who are very competent in teaching, but whose knowledge is what they acquired at high school,” warns Prats. The professor explains how the teaching plans for the infant and primary education levels have gone from being made up mainly of core subjects such as language or mathematics to giving way to a large majority of didactic subjects. An example can be found in the primary education degree of the UB or the UAB, in which many subjects contain the concept of “didactics”, but few focus on consolidating the basic knowledge of a specific discipline as does the subject of Mathematics for UAB teachers, in which it is specified that it aims to “consolidate fundamental mathematical knowledge”.
On the other hand, the educator Alba Castellví, who last year was a professor of didactics of children’s and youth literature at a Catalan university, warns that, despite the commitment to didactics, she observed how the faculty did not ‘is teaching to teach to read. “Students have serious problems being good teachers of reading and writing, and they don’t know the techniques to teach reading at school,” he criticizes. In fact, the educator explains that those in charge of the department recognized that this aspect was “lame” in primary school teacher studies, but that it was already taught in the early childhood education degree. At the same time, however, some students of this degree also told him that they did not know these techniques.
I suspended a student who was about to finish her degree because she had made six misspellings in one sentence”
Alba Castellví
Castellví also asserts that during the degree some students “do not learn to say the weak pronouns, to pronounce the sonorous essays or to write in a grammatically correct way” but, despite this, they manage to obtain the degree. “I suspended a student who was about to finish her degree because she had made six misspellings in a single sentence. She replied that until then no one had told her it was so serious,” she regrets. In addition, the educator also warns of an important problem: many are not clear about what linguistic immersion means and how to do it.
In the case of secondary school teachers, the process to get to the classroom involves doing a one-year master’s degree in teacher training. “It is a training focused on pedagogy, but the fundamental part which is the real practices in a center are very scarce”, warns Prats. In this sense, this year 250 novice teachers will do an educational MIR, but it is a project that, for the moment, is only in the pilot phase.
inspection
Few assessments and training at the will of each teacher
“Once you get the place, you can die doing the exact same thing.” This is how Prats describes the fact that Catalan is one of the few educational systems in which there are no periodic evaluations of how each teacher works, nor is there any mandatory training during the working career – with the exception of the initial training that all novice public school teachers. In fact, according to data collected by the OECD in 2018, Spain is the country where there are more teachers working who have never been evaluated. Neither by the director or the colleagues of the center nor by any external body.
Within this panorama, Catalonia is among the communities with the most teachers who have never been evaluated (34%), while the community with the fewest teachers who have not been evaluated (5%) is Asturias, the second with the best results in mathematics and reading in the latest PISA report. “There are teachers who may not do it as well as possible, but perhaps they don’t know it either,” laments Padín. It is true, however, that if a teacher wishes, he can request that once a year the Educational Inspectorate carries out an individual evaluation assessing aspects such as classroom management or the planning of teaching activities.
Just as there is no financial incentive for the motivated teacher to want to improve, the system also provides no sanction for those who do not work well. ”
Noa Padín Director of the Sant Martí CRP
Without regular reviews or an obligation to continue training, the improvement of teaching activity is left to the motivation and will of each teacher, which must be important, since the labor incentives to do so are not very prominent either . Half credit is given for every 15 hours of training and to get a promotion you must have 10, nine of which can correspond to years of service rendered.
Nevertheless, Padín insists that, without being obliged, “there are many teachers with a real interest in training” and there are also many centers that ensure that their cloisters receive training. He explains that the courses with the most demand have been those on digital strategy, those on emotional education – “because of the increase in complexity in the classroom” – and linguistics to get the C2 in Catalan. However, the member of Clam Educatiu makes a warning: “Just as there is no financial incentive for the motivated teacher to do the job well and improve, the system also does not contemplate any sanction for those who do not work well.” A thesis that is also supported by OECD data which show that in Catalonia sanctions are never imposed after an assessment, but a salary increase is not contemplated either if the result of the assessment is positive.
Sous
They are paid similar to teachers in the best communities in PISA
According to the data collected by UGT, Catalan teachers are the worst paid in the State with a base salary of €2,329 for teachers and €2,647 for high school teachers. These data do not take into account the add-ons with which they can charge up to €670 more per month for seniority or up to €1,000 more for assuming a management position. If we focus only on the basic salary, a Catalan teacher earns almost 400 euros less than a Basque teacher, who have the highest salary in the State, but the remuneration is similar to that of teachers in Asturias (2,387 €) or Castile and León (€2,353), the communities with the best educational results in the PISA tests.
If we compare it on an international scale, the OECD places Spain among the countries with the best paid teachers. According to the international body, a Spanish teacher with 15 years of experience earns around €40,000 a year, a figure that is higher than the OECD and EU average, in which teachers with these conditions charge around €33,000 per year. On the other hand, the salaries of Spanish teachers are lower than those received by their colleagues from the Netherlands (€42,000) or Germany (€60,000).
Little prestige
Lack of recognition for the cultural factor and the role of families
This week the Minister of Education, Anna Simó, sent a letter to Catalan teachers in which she told them that she is “fully aware” that they are a group that “perhaps their work is not valued enough”. This perception has been spreading in Catalonia for years with ideas such as teachers have almost three months of vacation (they usually start them in mid-July and finish them at the end of August), or that the work they do is apparently easy. “Many families think they know more than the teachers and dare to tell them how they should teach or examine”, laments Prats.
The professor explains that this disrepute occurs more in the south of Europe and that one of the consequences is that “many of those who get better grades do not consider this exit, because it is not well valued”. On the other hand, Prats also stands out as in countries such as China, Japan, Singapore or Korea, which occupy the first positions in the OECD educational ranking, the figure of the teacher is one of the most highly valued at a social level. “When you say you’re a teacher, the reaction is absolute admiration,” he insists. And he throws a dart at the institutions: “They must start campaigns and programs to return social prestige to this fundamental profession.”
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