The educational results of a country depend on many factors Worldwide Educational Sector have Improved a Lot, but the preparation and composition of teachers are one of the most important. The teaching staff of the Spanish education system has suffered in the last decade accelerated 2 times Of Sector aging that now makes two out of three teachers over 40 years old. The crisis has played a decisive role because as of 2010 forced to reduce the replacement rate of teachers, first to 30% and in 2012 to 10%.
That means that from that moment on for every 10 teachers who retired or left the system, only one was hired. To this, we must add the abolition of the incentives that were available for early retirement at 60 years.
The result is that while the OECD recommends that there is a teacher under 30 for every two over 50, in Spain that ratio is one to six. Thus, the most numerous age group is the one between 50 and 59 years old. While the group of those under 30 has been reduced by 45%.
The group from 60 to 64 has grown by 93%. The 51,000 places summoned in the last two years barely make it possible to alleviate this imbalance, because a large part of them have been won by interim professors with years of exercise and who finally regularize their situation.
Age is no impediment to excellent teaching, but in a complex organization such as education, ensuring adequate renewal is vital. The entry of well-trained young teachers is an especially important element in a time of technological and cultural transition that requires new knowledge and new skills.
Experience and innovation are the two elements that, well combined, allow the maturity and the thrust that is required for such a committed task and that requires as much energy as teaching.
It should also be added that, compared to the OECD average, Spanish teachers have more students per classroom, a longer school day and less time to prepare classes. We should review these parameters, because more time in the classroom is not a guarantee of better education, neither in the case of teachers nor in that of students.
Spanish high school students, for example, have 1,054 teaching hours per year, 246 more than Finns and, on the other hand, these have been in the first places in the results of the PISA tests for years, while the Spanish, despite to the improvements of the last years, they continue in the average positions of the table. The educational quality does not depend only or mainly on the time spent in class or on the volume of the content taught.
It is necessary to review both the curriculum taught and the way school time is used. And also to address two pending reforms that have been proposed for years, and that have become chronic deficiencies of the system.
The absence of a general system of continuing education and teacher evaluation, and the development of a professional career that allows incentives and rewards Teaching excellence Year after year, report after report, experts insist that these reforms are necessary to improve educational quality. The surprising thing is that knowing what the shortcomings are, let’s continue without remedying them.
