The grades that students have in Selectividad do not stop growing. It is no longer just that the number of passes is increasing, but that the grades are getting higher and higher. If in the 2015/2016 academic year the average was 8.75 out of 14 points, in the 2021/2022 academic year it was 10.34. The increase is observed in all the autonomous communities and is explained by two reasons, according to a study published today by the think tank EsadeEcPol. On the one hand, students try harder and compete fiercely for places in public universities.. On the other, there has been an “artificial increase in ratings” that has caused an “inflationary phenomenon” due to the “greater facilities” provided by the Government during Covid.
In 2020, the then-minister Isabel Celaá allowed greater optionality when answering Selectividad questions that still remains today, although there is no longer a pandemic. They were “measures to relax the pressure” that led to “a more benevolent evaluation”, according to the report. Students can choose the questions that they know best to the point that “they can get a 10 studying half of the syllabus”, as denounced yesterday by a professor from the Complutense University of Madrid. In, for example, Mathematics, the so-called “pandemic exams” allow us not to study entire blocks of content, such as calculus or geometry, and concentrate on what is easier for students, algebra and statistics, which in the 2nd year of Baccalaureate occupy barely two months of school hours.
EsadeEcPol researchers Lucía Cobreros, Lucas Gortázar and Juan Manuel Moreno say that “the measures taken during the Covid could have made sense in 2020 and even 2021″, because students missed class during confinement, but they advocate eliminating them as soon as possible. “They had a clear inflationary effect. The data clearly shows that the measures caused a significant increase in high school grades and also in the general phase and the specific phase due to the greater optionality within each of the subjects,” they conclude.
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They also observe that the change that occurred in 2017 caused another “inflationary effect”, when the then PP minister Íñigo Méndez de Vigo made the modality subject compulsory and that meant that there were more students who had to take the Mathematics exam.. «As the students complained, the CCAAs and the universities decided that the grade for the modality subject would score twice. There was a silent tacit pact that also caused an artificial increase in grades”, explains Gortázar, director of Education at EsadeEcPol.
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What part is due to a bubble and what can be attributed to the effort of the students? I would say half and half. The competition hypothesis weighs as much as the inflation hypothesis to explain the rise in qualifications, “replies Gortázar. “Students are trying harder because they take the test more seriously, especially those with high grades. There is also inflation in high school. And there is the rise in the final admission grade in 2020, which, in a single year, tripled the annual rise of the previous period.
The work reflects how very specific political decisions have a real impact on the future of young people. The university entrance exam is already 50 years old (it is the only educational piece of the Franco regime that is still in force) and, every time it undergoes a change, however small, it produces a domino effect on students.
The authors also see that this exam has “low uniformity” and “low objectivity” compared to other tests in neighboring countries, such as the French Bac, the German Abitur or the Italian Maturità.. They are not in favor of a single test throughout Spain, as the PP claims, but they do ask for “more comparable” exams and a more reliable correction system.. “Just because our education system is increasingly diverse, it makes sense that the university entrance exam is a statewide benchmark that levels the playing field for all students regardless of their background and study preferences,” they stress.
They point out that “in a single district system it is inconsistent that uniformity is so low and that objectivity could be improved.”. It is necessary to move towards greater comparability” and they urge “setting questions or tests common to all the CCAAs or agreeing on the weighting of different subjects”. “It is necessary to harmonize the correction criteria, now very different from each other,” they add.
As every year, EL MUNDO has published its renowned ranking of the 50 best Spanish universities, a reference classification for campuses and families. Click here to see which educational institutions are most in demand for qualifications.