58% of the Andalusian centres that took part in the latest PISA assessment are in the middle range of national results in reading, and 34% obtained results above the average for Spain. These are the figures reported by the Regional Minister for Education, María del Carmen Castillo, during her visit to the Instituto de Educación Secundaria Carmen de Burgos, in Huércal de Almería (Almería), where she met with teachers and students who took the test.
The Andalusian sample consisted of 56 centres, public, private and charter, with very varied socioeconomic and cultural contexts, as the minister detailed. Castillo acknowledged that the overall data show room for improvement and explained that the Regional Ministry has chosen to "focus on the positive" and learn from the centres that are making a difference. "The aim is to extrapolate good practices to the rest of the education system through a powerful and effective teacher training network so as to raise the general academic level," she stressed.
More than 700 support teachers
The minister argued that academic rigour should not be seen as an obstacle, but as students' main ally, and considered that having reliable and continuous assessment systems, and not only occasional external tests, makes it possible to detect any difficulty in time. She also pointed to the need to "rethink" methodological and assessment aspects, to reconsider the curricula, 80% of which are designed by the Ministry, and to promote legislative reforms that "restore the culture of effort".
On investment, Castillo explained that "the countries that obtain the best results do not achieve them only by investing more, although investment is necessary". She recalled that Andalusia increases its resources every year, with the addition this academic year of more than 700 teachers to reinforce Language and Mathematics, and stressed that reference education systems stand out above all for "applying innovative methodologies, training teachers in STEM didactics and regulating the use of screens and devices in classrooms", an area whose impacts the OECD itself analyses.
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