bokeh

35% of all the students going to state schools in the Valencian Community (Provinces of Castellon, Valencia and Alicante) fail to ever graduate.

Font de Mora, "El Consellar de Educación" (the minister of education of the regional government) blamed the poor standard on the cancellation of the Ebro plan. The question is how has diverting a river in the north of Spain to feed golf courses in the Valencian Community got anything to do with poor state education?

Source in Spanish, or through Google Translate.

billgates

What do you mean by "fail to graduate"?

Fail their exams at school? Fail to get into university?

If the latter, then a 35% failure rate is pretty good going.

The Uk seems hell bent on getting every child a university degree. To what end? All it does is make it more difficult to select the brighter students.

The old 70% failure system in the uk made far more sense to me.

At least people know where they stand.

leighbloke

"I am upper class and look down on him and him............................................... .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. ....... I know my place"

bokeh

You might think 35% failure is "pretty good going" but there are probably parents who will read this and take action to protect their children from this failing system. 5 years ago 25% were failing. This year 35%. Where will we be in 5 more years? 45%?

bil

I used to know teachers in the UK that made a living teaching school LEAVERS basic literacy and numeracy.

Scary.

Lionda

I don't think they are eating enough vegetables

me me

Are we talking about Spanish children or all nationalities?

The problem with foreign children is pretty obvious. Areas with a large expat population have extra problems. When a child is learning to read in their home country, they can rely on parents to read with them and help out with homework. Most young British children cannot count on the family to help as they do not speak Spanish. Their parents never think of putting Spanish programmes on the TV, or buy Spanish newspapers or books. I have heard some parents saying that their child is fluent, but the standard is very basic. Of course to parents that cannot understand a word it sounds good. In the classroom the teacher has to cope with lots of different languages, not only English and Spanish. Spanish pupils in these schools also suffer as teaching becomes slower due to the language difficulties. The same scenario is happening in UK schools where there are large number of immigrants. In areas where there are no or hardly any expats, the problem is apathy, no jobs, why should we bother attitude. It is a sad state of affairs but children have not been taught to obey anyone, teachers have problems with class control and this seems to be a worldwide problem, not just Spain.

bokeh

We are talking the totality of the students, i.e. every single student that attends state school in the Valencian Community. Obviously children that speak little or no Spanish would have a much higher failure rate.

bil

The huge problem with schools IMO is that there needs to be a sensible, pragmatic attitude. In the old days it was the teacher was god, now they have no power at all.

As with so many things, there has to be balance.

Primary school children should be taught the basics of grammar and punctuation, the times table and some basics in two languages other than their own.

snikpoh

My son is just about to move up from primary to secondary school and we have to choose the school for him. We are really strugling on this one.

Do we go private and have him have to make a new set of friends again (only some will go to this school) or do we put him into the 'default' state school with most of his friends?

We don't seem to be able to get any information on school results - like the league tables we had back in UK.

Does anyone know where I can get this sort of info? It's all very well looking around at the facilities and also checking how well behaved the children are but I think that results are also important.

bokeh

What's more important to you, his friends, or that he is properly educated?

Ask to see the school result for the previous year "la memoria anual". You have a legal right as a parent to have access to this document.

me me

Quite honestly I dont know if these results are good or bad in comparison to other EU countries, or what failure means.

bokeh

Failure to reach National Curriculum. Failure to graduate at the end of schooling. And this is just basic studies.

me me

Just like good old blighty then.

bil

What do you expect with the classes packed to bursting?