Selectivity or revalidation: what changes are expected?
Selectivity or revalidation? The next month of June is celebrated the last University Access Test (PAU). From this last edition, the universities will be the ones who decide the mechanisms by which a student can be obtained. In addition, the Organic Law for the Improvement of Education (LOMCE) also brings under the arm the revalidation, final exams that will be the key to get the baccalaureate degree and that will soon replace extinct selectivity. Now, what are the changes that give way to the selectivity and that bring the revalidation?
What is a revalidation?
As has already been said revalidation will take over from the selectivity since it will suppose a very similar format. In the beginning it was proposed that these exams have a format Type test, but this idea was finally dismissed before the rejection that it provoked in the different autonomous communities. Therefore, it is expected that this new entrance exam to the university will be similar in terms of the type of exam.
Now, with this new format, each faculty ensures the right to develop their own entrance exam for their future students. A measure that clashes with the government's intention to establish a single district for all universities to establish the same criteria for admission to prevent a student having to travel throughout the Spanish territory in search of a center that suits their needs.
However, going back to the revalidation, the Government will allow each autonomous community to set the characteristics of this revalidation. In this way, like the current selectivity system, different tests will be found in each region of Spain. The only thing common in the whole country will be that this test will be necessary to obtain the baccalaureate degree and that these exams will represent 40% of the final grade while the half of the subjects studied in high school will be the remaining 60%.
How will the revalidation be?
In the absence of specifying some details, in principle the LOMCE establishes a series of common characteristics throughout the Spanish territory. For example the duration: It is estimated that the revalidation will last four days and a maximum of five in those autonomous communities with a co-official language. The subjects that enter these exams will be eight and will be divided into five trunks, two optional and one specific that the student will choose.
It has also established a maximum of 15 questions per exam and that as has already been said will not be test type. The draft contemplates open and semi-open items as well as multiple choice questions. However, it will be the community that ultimately develops the questions to be formulated and who writes the exam model, in this way the test held in La Rioja could be different from Castilla la Mancha and thus throughout the Spanish territory.
Each autonomous government also reserves the right to decide the date of holding this revalidation. On the other hand the result of the students will be communicated to each education center and as reported by Europa Press, these qualifications will not be used for the preparation of the ranking of institutes and other educational centers
From June 2017, with the celebration of the first revalidation, homogeneity will be sought. And it is that the first intention of this Law was precisely to achieve equal revalidation throughout Spain by asking the same questions and during the same days throughout the nation. The intention of the Government was that the contents of the students of our country were the same and that in this way after the evaluation of external agents to the center, a national ranking could be elaborated.
Finally, as mentioned in this article, this point has not been achieved and it is not known to what extent this homogeneity after the first revalidation can be compared with the Government's intention. At the moment we will have to wait until 2017 to know how these tests will be and to verify after their celebration has changed the selectivity model that until now has marked the entrance of the students in the universities.
Damián Montero
