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Spain Primary and Secondary Education
From 1970 until 1984, Spain's education system was
based
entirely on the LGE, often referred to as the Villar
Palasi Law
after the minister of education and science at the time,
Jose
Luis Villar Palasi. This law was the Franco government's
attempt
to modernize Spain's public education system. Although it
has
been added to, and modified by, the LODE since the return
of
democracy, the structure it established was still nearly
completely intact in the late 1980s
(see
fig. 9). The law
provided that primary education (Educacion General
Basica--EGB)
would be free and compulsory from the ages of six to
fourteen. In
the 1986-87 school year, there were about 185,000 primary
institutions that provided instruction to about 6.6
million
students, 70 percent of whom were in state schools.
Secondary
education (Bachillerato Unificado Polivalente--BUP) lasted
from
age fourteen to sixteen and terminated in the state
graduation
examination, the bachillerato. Those who completed
the
bachillerato could then enroll in an additional
one-year
program (Curso de Orientacion Universitaria--COU) to
prepare
themselves for the university entrance exams. In the
1986-87
school year, more than 2,600 secondary schools enrolled
about 1.2
million students. Studies at all institutions were
organized
around an academic year that ran from about mid-September
to the
middle or latter part of June.
Secondary school attendance was optional, but if
students did
not go on to secondary school, they had to enroll in
vocational
training for the period when they were fifteen to sixteen
years
of age. Students in the vocational program (Formacion
Professional--FP) generally completed their studies with
an
equivalent exam, the labor bachillerato. In the
1986-87
school year, about 2,200 vocational centers provided
instruction
to more than 700,000 students. The FP was divided into two
two-year phases. The first, which was obligatory for
everyone who
did not enter the BUP, provided a general introduction to
applied
vocations, such as clerical work or electronics, while the
second
phase offered more specialized vocational training.
Special
education for the physically and the mentally impaired was
provided in schools run by both state and private
organizations.
Perhaps sensing that this model of education imposed a
choice
between academic and vocational studies on children at too
young
an age, the government began to experiment in the 1980s
with an
alternate model that kept students on a single, unified
track
until the age of sixteen. An equally troublesome aspect of
the
system, however, was the irreversibility of the choice
between
BUP and FP. Once a student had chosen the FP program, it
was
impossible to go on to the university, so many youngsters
chose
the BUP even if, at the time, they were more suited for
vocational training or were better able to use the more
practical
skills taught in the FP. This dimension of the educational
system, plus the traditional disdain of many Spaniards
toward
manual labor, caused the BUP to enroll nearly twice as
many
students as the FP. Observers believed, however, that if
the
economic cramp of the 1980s continued to shrink the job
market,
the balance might shift toward the FP because the
acquisition of
a marketable skill might look more important than the
gaining of
academic qualifications. Indeed, between the 1979-80 and
1986-87
academic years, enrollment in the vocational programs
increased
nearly 35 percent (from 515,000 to 695,000), while
enrollment in
the academic program grew by only about 8 percent (from
1.055
million to 1.142 million).
Another major problem with Spanish education was the
continued high failure rate. The standards set for
graduation
from the EGB were not especially demanding, yet between
one-fifth
and one-third of all students failed to complete the
course of
study. Failure rates ran much higher in state schools than
in
private institutions. Critics blamed principally the poor
quality
of instruction and thus, indirectly, teacher training. In
1981
the government published a revised EGB curriculum that set
forth
goals for both teachers and students. This revised
curriculum was
not adopted easily or without resistance, and there were
those
who argued that it was too rigid and centralized and that
it
placed too much emphasis on rote memory.
The uneven spread of nursery schools contributed to the
high
failure rate in later years. In the 1960s and the 1970s,
pre-school education began to gain in popularity to such
an
extent that, in the mid-1980s, some 80 percent of Spain's
children between the ages of four and six went to nursery
schools
(1.3 million in 1986-87). Many primary teachers thus
assumed that
their students had completed a year or two of pre-school
education. About one-third of the 39,000 nursery schools
in
operation in the 1986-87 school year were still in the
private
sector, however, and the public nurseries were little more
than
day care centers. The effect was to create a disadvantaged
student population right from the beginning--one that was
likely
to persist for many years and to continue to contribute to
the
high failure rate within the system. The
solution--universal,
public-supported pre-schools--was not a likely prospect as
of the
late 1980s.
Another source of deficiencies in the public
educational
system was the low pay teachers received. Even though
teachers'
salaries were raised by more than 40 percent between 1983
and
1985, in 1988 the average salary for teachers in the
public
schools at both the elementary and the secondary levels
was still
only about US$15,000 per year. In 1988 more than 200,000
teachers
went out on strike to gain a 14 percent pay increase that
would
have raised their monthly salary by about US$175. The
government
put down the strike after street demonstrations led to
extensive
violence.
Data as of December 1988
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