Barcelona (EFE).- The subsidized and private Spanish schools “swell” the high school grades of their students with outstanding marks, while the public ones tend to qualify them with passes.
This is clear from the new report prepared by the University System Observatory (OSU) which, based on official data, has compared the Baccalaureate grades of Spanish students with those achieved in the general phase of the University Access Tests ( pau).
According to the report, the general trend in Spain is for students to obtain substantially better grades in the Baccalaureate than in the general phase of the PAU.
In the computation to calculate the grade that opens the doors to the university system, 60% of the weight comes from the average grade obtained in Baccalaureate and the remaining 40% is that obtained in the general phase of the PAU.
In the presentation of the report this Thursday, the director of the Observatory of the University System, Vera Sacristán, stated that “what happens in general in Spain as a whole is that in all the centers the excellent grades are swelling” of Baccalaureate, since that “it is demonstrated” that these “are not reflected in the results of the PAU” and that “those who produce the most inflation are the subsidized private centers and even more so the private ones.”
For this reason, it has verified two factors of inequity in access to the university that are caused by the autonomous community of origin of the student and by the ownership of the educational center.
Valencian Community and Galicia: more imbalance
According to the report, the highest difference between the Baccalaureate grade and that of the PAU is registered in the Valencian Community, where it is 9 times higher, since 18.5% of students obtain excellent in Baccalaureate and only 2% get this note in the PAU.
In Galicia, 20.8% of students get excellent in Baccalaureate compared to 2.8% who obtain it in the PAU, while in the Canary Islands 28.5% of students get excellent in Baccalaureate and only 6.5% do. obtained in the university entrance exam.
In other communities such as La Rioja, Cantabria or Castilla y León, the percentage of grades between 9 and 10 is barely double in the Baccalaureate than in the general phase of the PAU.
In general terms, lower passing grades are recorded in public institutes, which corresponds to more students with a grade between 4 and 5 in the general phase of the PAU.
Most outstanding in the private ones of all the CCAA
Regarding the difference between the types of centers, the data show that in all communities the percentages of students with an outstanding Baccalaureate grade are higher in private centers (subsidized or not) than in public ones.
In addition, they are more so in private centers without a concert, with the exception of Catalonia, where the highest proportion of outstanding results occurs in private subsidized schools.
In general terms, there is a great difference between autonomous communities in the percentages of students with outstanding Baccalaureate grades, which vary between 12.7% in the Balearic Islands and 28.2% in Murcia.
It is also verified that some communities, among which are Murcia, the Canary Islands and Extremadura, are always at the head of the high percentages of students with Bachillerato grades between 9 and 10, regardless of the type of their centers of origin.
Regarding the general phase of the PAU, the percentage of students who obtain a grade between 9 and 10 is more than six times higher in Asturias than in the Balearic Islands.
The highest percentage of grades between 9 and 10 in the PAUs is in the Canary Islands (26.1%), and is 2.4 times higher than the lowest, which is recorded in Catalonia (10.8%).
Fix the mismatch
As a “more effective” measure to solve the imbalance, Vera Sacristán has proposed giving more weight to the grade for the general phase of the PAU than to the Baccalaureate grade in the entrance grade.
Another of the proposed measures is absolute transparency in terms of the Baccalaureate grades and that each year the distribution of grades of each of the centers be made public, both these and those of the general phase of the PAU and of the subjects of the specific phase.
It also proposes that more homogeneous and coordinated PAU correction criteria should be applied between communities.