Reforms to improve educational performance
The Department of Education has decided to introduce important changes to promote the improvement of educational results in Catalonia. The aim is to strengthen the areas of mathematics and languages to address the deficiencies identified in the results of the PISA report.
Measures to standardize learning
Schools will receive learning guides to standardize content and assessment criteria, with the aim of improving reading comprehension and mathematical skills. These measures will be rolled out initially in a specific number of centers before being implemented on a wider scale.
Improvement courses and teaching support
A program will be established to improve the teaching of mathematics in an initial group of schools. In addition, reading comprehension will be strengthened with a teacher training plan in more than 200 centers to improve reading teaching methodologies and the assessment of reading comprehension.
Budget and commitments
The Minister of Education, Anna Simó, has admitted the budgetary limitations but has committed to apply the measures as far as possible. Despite the budget restrictions, a credit supplement of 312 million euros has been achieved for education, which will be added to the previous year’s budget.
Other educational initiatives
In addition to the reinforcement in mathematics and languages, improvement programs will be established to combat early school leaving and a review of the existing models of attention to diversity is planned. The possibility of implementing pilot tests in educational zones and the study of timetables and the school day is also contemplated.