“There are teachers who don’t believe it”

He would like more or less, the Lomloe was ambitious in his approach. But the rush to put it in the classes – which then there is a change of government and the incoming repeals the norm without having come to be released, as it happened to the PP of Aznar with its Loce – is also being its main ballast.

The greatest change of educational model in decades was implemented without having trained teachers, and among that, the complexity of some of the new elements that I introduced – the learning situations, for example – and that many teachers “do not believe it”, the brand new commitment of the PSOE is costing him to start in the classroom, as they create several teachers and directors consulted by this newspaper.

“I think the change does not notice,” Rosa Rocha, director of the IES Guadarrama, in the Community of Madrid, and Adimad President, the Association of Directors of Public Institutes of the Region, shoots so much. “Some subjects have changed, the organization of these subjects … but except for some very specific departments in each center I do not believe that great changes are being produced,” says his experience in the four years already (although the first was halfway) that is carried out by applying the educational law in the classrooms.

There are things that are inevitable. “When an educational law enters, it brings a series of curricular elements that already cause a change. In previous laws we talked about indicators, now of criteria. Only the nomenclature implies a change, and sometimes that dislodges the teachers,” affects Jorge Delgado, director of the Blas Infante College, of Écija, and president of Fedeip, the Federation of Directors and Directors of Public Centers of Public Centers.

Óscar Martín Centeno, director of the CEIPS Santo Domingo de Algete and president of the Council of Directors of Madrid, believes that “it would have been interesting that deeper changes had occurred. The law raises a fully competence learning”.

Learning situations

Martín Centeno puts on the table one of the main challenges that the Lomloe has brought: the learning situations, the ultimate concretion of the competency system that the law intends to introduce. They are a new element that implies creating situations in which the teachings approach the reality of the student and its surroundings, if you want to do well require several hours of preparation before lowering them to class and, although it has cost time to understand them are already assimilated, Martín Centeno grants. But it is difficult to find the conditions to apply them well when you have 30 students in class and your work schedule does not leave gaps just for anything other than teaching, he adds.

For this director, and coincides with him Rocha, a good part of the problem has been that the government worried more about approving the law than explaining it. When LOGSE arrived at the system in the year 90, this teacher recalls, he dedicated himself a whole year before preparing the teachers so that he could apply it correctly. And that law, although grounded with what there was, was not as much as the Lomloe. Hence, now, four years after their descent to the classroom, the directors are beginning to see what is applied. More or less.

Toni Solano, professor of Language and Literature and director of the IES Bovalar, in Castellón, asks his teachers at the end of the course whether they apply the law or not. Two years ago half responded that yes without ambiguity. The other half or did not do it or had problems or declined to answer. This course has risen the proportion of teachers that do raise learning situations.

“Another thing is what this half who says that it is applying the learning situations is applied, because if you do what comes out in the book is the opposite of what the law about these situations advocates (they must be contextualized, adapted to the environment). The other 50% is not even expected, they continue to give the class as always. They say it is impossible,” he says. “In class hegemony is the explanation, homework (and that from the address we insist that they do not send duties) and that the note is an average [va contra los postulados de la ley]. Today I have spoken with a department partner who is supposed to take high school and has told me that as long as there are not going to take it. Which means that you are not working by competitions or will ever do it, ”he laments.

The textbook, the consulted coincide, is more a brake than an aid to apply the law. To the clueless teacher or who has no interest in doing so, he will guide him, “but in the end he will end up absorbing because he is very comfortable, but he does not adapt the situations to the context, to something that is closest to students (the social network, the culture of the area), as he asks for the law. With the book there will never be a methodological change,” says Solano.

Evaluation and repetition

Where there has not been so much diversity of ways to act is with the always controversial aspect of the repetition of the course and the degree. The Lomloe separated the promotion of the number of suspensions, as had happened historically, and left the decision in the hands of each student’s teaching staff, who meets and decides whether or not it is prepared for the next course or stage. But since it is not an issue that each teacher can decide whether or not he applies, he has entered fully into the cloisters. With its dose of heated debates (probably not as heated as those that occur on social networks), but that part is being fulfilled, Rocha grants.

“It is true that there is a slow but continuous reduction in the number of repeaters. It is common for the student to promote course or title people and then end in other programs” If the standard academic route is not theirs, explains the director, who believes that it is positive to reduce repetition because in general – there are always exceptions – it does not contribute much. However, it is also aware that it is a system that can be unfair, because depending on the opinion of the teachers it becomes subjective, which implies that what is worth in a 3º A is not enough in a 3rd B.

Solano says that in his case the usual is to approve the student basically because the opposite is, in most cases, to lose it. “We have cases of absentee, lost kids, who have been repeating from primary and we are passing them. We call them flexible. We do not argue. When the time comes we see where they fit better and there are beautiful debates among the teaching staff. The same is not fair to pass them because they are evicted, but it makes no sense And suddenly he puts the batteries because he sees the possibility of holding.

The evaluation by competencies is a little worse. The law requires a continuous evaluation practice, for using a term with a certain route, where the note does not depend only on an exam or even the average of several. Not a job. “You have to use different instruments, different products, follow processes and then all that ends in the final grade. It is not an exam. You have 25-30 different items of which to make an average and you also have to relate them to the key skills and your subject,” explains Martín Centeno. And that misses many teachers and even families, who do not just understand where the note of their sons or daughters comes from, adds the director. “It is an overwriting,” he grants, “but it is a closer evaluation.”

Always more bureaucracy

That is not failing either. The landing of a new law usually comes with an increase in bureaucratic load, professionals explain. As little the first course, when the annual schedules must be rebuilt and adapt to the postulates of the new standard. “And with this law the content is not taken, it is put in programming and ready,” Centeno explains. “An annual program are between 200 and 500 pages that someone has to write. A learning situation are hundreds of them. And everything must be constantly documented. I think it should be more schematic, more functional, so that we could dedicate the necessary time to create the situations,” he reflects.

“You have a competition, then a specific competition that is specified in criteria and knowledge,” says Delgado the different elements that the curriculum includes. “All that has involved more bureaucratic load when making the programming. By having a greater number of curricular elements, the bureaucratic burden in the teaching teams grows,” he says. A traditional complaint among the directors that is only worse.

And the equitable distribution of students?

If the people consulted coincide in something, it is in the failure of the law in which it was one of their great bets against one of the main problems of the educational system: to eliminate segregation in school, mainly between the public network and the private concerted. The Lomloe proposed that schools have a more equitable distribution of students, which better reflect social composition and do not group them according to their social class, as happens not only between the two networks, but also within the public. But as enrollment depends on the autonomous communities, the situation, they tell, is as it was.

“The equitable distribution of students among the networks is not taking place, at least in Andalusia it is not happening,” explains the Andalusian Delgado. “To do this, a rule should have been made that the public is the main system and the concerted subsidiary. But, in fact in Andalusia we have passed in five years of 80% in the public and 20% in the concerted at 76-24,”

A similar response offers Rocha in Madrid and Solano in the Valencian Community. “I do not know that there have been changes in the distribution of students,” he says briefly but with conviction the first. “Is students equitable?” No, “says the second. “In Castellón have closed I don’t know how many children’s and primary classrooms in recent years, all in the public. In the concerted one. There will be no equitable distribution while there are concerts.”