SEVILLA/MADRID, 30 Ago. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Government will inform the autonomous communities and universities this Thursday, August 31, of what the Evaluation of the Baccalaureate for University Access (EBAU) will be like for the 2023-2024 academic year.
As reported by ministerial sources to Europa Press, the ministries of Education and Universities will hold two telematic meetings to report on the Executive’s decision.
At 10:30 a.m., the Secretary of State for Education, José Manuel Bar, will meet with representatives of the autonomous communities by videoconference. At 11:30 a.m., the meeting of the Ministry of Universities with representatives of the Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities (CRUE) will also take place online.
In these meetings, as explained by the same sources, they will explain what decision is adopted before the EBAU of 2024. The Executive could decide to maintain the current test or start the transitional period -for which it should still approve the corresponding Royal Decree-, although more options are not ruled out either.
Due to the anticipated call for general elections, the Ministry decided to paralyze the approval of the royal decree of the new university entrance exam due to “responsibility” on the understanding that it was “more logical” for the new government to carry it out.
Before the end of the Legislature, the Ministry left the processing of the royal decree of the new university entrance test “completely finished”. Although the decree was ready before the elections, it did not go through the Council of Ministers.
According to the sources consulted, the decision is made now because the Executive promised that the students and teachers of the second year of Baccalaureate would know what test they are going to face at the beginning of the 2023-2024 academic year in order to prepare it properly.
The implementation of the new model of the university entrance exam was scheduled for the 2023-2024 academic year so that, after a transitory period, it would be definitively implemented in June 2028.
In the draft royal decree that regulates the basic characteristics of the University entrance exam for the 2023-2024 academic year and establishes the procedure for calculating the entrance qualification, published in February, the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training eliminated the maturity test and the multiple choice questions that were initially planned for this new test.
Likewise, Education increased the time to complete the exercises in the new test, going from 90 minutes to 105 minutes, since, as justified by the Department directed by Pilar Alegría, “the reading of the exercise, its analysis and production are taken into account “.
Another of the changes included in the draft royal decree is that students, at the time of enrolling for the entrance exam, will choose between taking the History of Spain or History of Philosophy exam. In addition, in communities with a co-official language, an examination of their own language is added.
With the aim of testing the new EBAU, the Ministry carried out a pilot test in March in 50 centers in all the Spanish autonomous communities, Ceuta and Melilla, with the exception of those governed by the Popular Party and Aragon and the Basque Country. This pilot test included less memory exercises that reflect everyday life situations.
According to the correction guides for the pilot exams of the new university entrance exam, published by Education, the new EBAU would deduct 0.25 points for each spelling error and the tildes would count as half a mistake.
Thus, in the guide corresponding to the Spanish Language and Literature test, it is indicated that “the grade for each exercise will always be 0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 1, 1.25, 1.5, 1.75, 2, 2.25 or 2.5 points, up to a total of 10 points” and it is specified that 0.25 points will be deducted for each spelling error; accents will be considered as half a mistake, and all other cases (capital letters, foreign words, exclamation marks and question marks) will be counted as a mistake. Also, repeated errors will only discount once.
The guide proposes that, when the student’s answer can be improved or contains errors, it is qualified with a score of 0.25, for example, when asked to prepare an expository-argumentative text, even if the presentation does not fit “in absolute to the proposed format”, has “an extension less than required”, does not fit the topic or contains “inadequate, insufficient vocabulary” and with “abundant grammatical errors”.
In short, the guide points out that “a joint positive evaluation will tend as long as the text has a minimum of coherence and cohesion, as well as a certain expressive correction”.