Students take an exam on a file image. /
The deans of seventy faculties, including that of Murcia, demand a specific test to start the teaching career that evaluates the aptitudes
«What is desirable is that university students who study Education have a vocation for teaching, and not a more or less high grade». The dean of the Faculty of Education of the University of Murcia, Begoña Alfageme, has joined the demand of another 69 deans of the faculties of Education throughout Spain who demand that special entrance tests be implemented for their degrees: the degrees for work as a teacher of Infant and Primary and the master’s degree in Secondary Education.
The fundamental objective of these tests is to try to select future undergraduate students according to their vocation and ability to teach, and not based on their average entrance grade, as is the case now. Obtaining a place in the degrees that lead to teaching is complicated, since a very high Ebau qualification is required. This sieve means that the students who get a place do not give it up, despite the fact that they do not like the profession to which they are headed. “We have many students who are there because they have managed to enter and have the place, and many others outside with a very marked vocation for teaching who will not be able to exercise it,” laments the dean, Begoña Alfageme, who considers that specific entrance tests would allow a better selection.
The implementation of specific access tests was proposed by the Ministry of Education a year ago, but the Ministry of Universities, which is competent in the matter, has ruled it out. The deans believe, on the other hand, that the test would be very positive for the future of the educational system, and they will defend it in the meeting they plan to hold with the Government this week.
The entrance tests for the studies that lead to the teaching profession that the deans propose are in line with those that are already applied in universities in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, which in turn have been inspired by models such as that of Finland “with very good results”, according to Alfageme. The system consists of two phases. The first test contains two exercises, one on logical-mathematical skills and the other on communication skills and critical reasoning.
The second phase, to which the candidates who had passed the previous exercises would pass, would be oral and would consist of two other parts: the defense of the personal profile (with the objective of evaluating the interpersonal skills, the previous experiences of the candidates and their motivations ). And a debate in groups of students around a current educational issue. The qualification of the tests would be pass or fail. Among the suitable ones, the access would be ordered according to the Selectivity note that they had previously obtained.