Injustice in classrooms: Teachers pressured to pass undeserving students

The other day I saw a tweet that seemed insane to me. I decided to pull the thread and, my goodness, the Catalan educational system is in much worse shape than we might think. It's a real tragedy, look.

The tweet in question said the following: 2nd year of ESO evaluation: 124 students. List with 18 possible repeaters. After much debate and knowing it's not possible, it ends up at 9. Management says it's impossible, that inspection won't allow it. Solution: 2 truant students repeat and the rest move on.

What? Inspection, meaning Generalitat, pressures teachers to pass students who really should repeat?

I found it so grotesque that I started talking to several teachers and also to David Rabadà, who, besides being a teacher, is also the press chief of the Secondary Teachers Union.

In the end, all of them admitted to me that yes, the system pressures teachers to let students who don't deserve it move on to the next grade. These pressures come from three fronts: from the national law, from some school managements that don't want a high number of repeaters to affect the reputation of the school in question, and also, attention, from Generalitat, through the inspectors. That's where a teacher told me about a case that left me speechless.

A teacher decides that a student, who has failed many subjects, should repeat 3rd year of ESO. The parents protest and end up going to the inspector to file a complaint. The student in question starts the school year in September where the teacher's criteria place him, that is, repeating 3rd year of ESO. Then October comes and the inspector's resolution arrives. That is, Generalitat's resolution. What does the inspector say? That the student can't repeat and must automatically move on to 4th year of ESO, even though the school year has already started. Unbelievable.

Then, we have some PISA reports that say the Catalan educational system is at the bottom in Spain and Europe, some basic skills tests whose results Generalitat still doesn't dare to release, but already warn that they'll be disastrous. Since this is like a snowball that keeps getting bigger and now affects the whole system, we also have university entrance exam results with the lowest percentage of passing students in the last five years. With an average score that falls below the records of 2017.

In this video, which you'll find at the top of the news, I explain in more detail this tragedy and this injustice happening in our educational system. An educational system that some are destroying, that rewards ignorance and lack of effort from students, and that pressures teachers while the problem keeps getting bigger.