Our fellow Cynthia Martínez Garrido participates in the program “Espacio público” for debating about the great questions that the present and future of the educative models set out

Cynthia Martínez Garrido, one of the researchers at the Chair, participated last March 16 on the debate about the present and future situation of the Spanish education, promoted by Espacio Público Foundation (https://espacio-publico.com/la-educacion-ante-los-desafios-del-siglo-xxi).

Last 16 March, our fellow Cynthia Martínez-Garrido participated in an interesting debate under the question: Are our educative models in crisis? Regarding this topic, equality of opportunities, equality of access to students and the experience of a quality education within the Spanish system were discussed.

Taking this question as the starting point, interesting contributions and reflections came up regarding the 21st Century challenges that the Education is facing. In this way, the Spanish education presents some alarming data: a drop-out rate that doubles the European rate; a high socioeconomic segregation or a meritocracy-based education, which punishes mistakes, putting us as the country with the highest repetition rate in Europe.

 All this comes from a based-structural problem, which is that the Administration and local Governments do not get behind our discredited public education, which contrasts with the vision other European countries have about public education. On the other hand, although we have a law of education, it is not applied the same way on every Autonomous Community, since they present diametrically opposed data on topics such as segregation.

Furthermore, the continuous changes on this law depending on the ruling political party makes very complicated to produce changes, what created a burnout effect on teachers, who are also overwhelmed by the lack of resources of the public system, a disproportionate student’s ratio that does not allow to meet the specific requirements students need and by too-demanding families that asks for excellent academic results in many cases. These are presented as the main challenges that the education will face during the next years.

In too many occasions the burden of educative success is put upon the students’ shoulders but, does it depend on the students’ interest and effort or are the institutions the ones that should support a good-quality, egalitarian, inclusive, and equitable education so students can take advantage of it? The speakers hope that with the LOMLOE the institutions are the ones to launch a fair education, as a citizenship right.

Detailed information about the debate can be checked here: https://espacio-publico.com/la-educacion-ante-los-desafios-del-siglo-xxi#para-pensar-la-politica-educativa

For the display of the whole debate: https://youtu.be/TCinPXb-Qzk