Teaching 3rd-year ESO in Spain: 23 out of 30 fail the same exercises
A teacher describes a Spanish 3rd-year ESO classroom where 23 of 30 students fail an exam copied from class, with no disciplinary tools to restore order.
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
Teaching 3rd-year ESO in Spain: 23 fail with the exercises already done in class
A classroom in a state-subsidised school, 30 students per class, 20% of migrant background performing exactly on par with the average, and a maths teacher who puts on the exam the very same exercises, with the same numbers, he has solved on the board. Twenty-three fail. The account, posted on a current affairs forum and attributed to the experience of a secondary school teacher with a PhD in physics, describes a class where at least two students have adapted curricula, two have an open suicide-risk protocol, two have dyslexia, two are gifted and two have ADHD. And where between ten and twelve kids never even take out their notebooks.
The scene is not an isolated case according to those who have taught in similar classrooms. The pattern repeats itself: students reaching the third year of ESO (the third year of Spain's compulsory secondary education) still counting on their fingers, passing maths year after year, and then suddenly hitting fractions and equations. The question hovering over the whole text is not pedagogical but about incentives: if the system ends up passing everyone anyway, what does failing teach?
What happens when there is no disciplinary tool
The teacher's diagnosis is blunt: there is no room for action. Shouting buys ten seconds of silence. Reporting incidents achieves nothing. Expelling a student runs into its legal status as a measure of last resort. Calling the family always gets the same answer: their child is a gem. And the head of studies, even with the unanimous complaint of the teaching staff, replies that this is just how things are.
That is the core of the problem according to this version of events: the teacher's authority has not been challenged, it has been dissolved through regulation. In parallel, school management and the inspectorate tend to side with the student and their family whenever there is a conflict. The result is a classroom where breaking the rules carries no cost, and where anyone who wants to teach competes with those who do not want to learn.
The account's final demand is not economic. No strikes, no pay rises. Discipline and standards, just that, and the recognition that neither governments nor families have any interest in bringing them back.
The 20% of migrant students performing like the average
The opening premise includes a detail worth not losing: that 20% of students of migrant background show, according to the text, academic performance at the average and behaviour no different from the rest. It is no minor detail, because it immediately defuses the crudest reading of the issue. The problem described is not ethnic; it is one of classroom culture and incentives.
Even so, the opposite objection appears later in the discussion: some claim that the behaviour and performance of certain foreign students, with specific mention of those of Maghrebi origin, is somewhat or considerably worse. It is a claim backed by no data whatsoever and one that clashes with the account's own starting point. Without figures to support it, it remains what it is: an impression, not a finding.
Lecture-style teaching and the teacher who only cares about silence
The harshest criticism is not aimed at the students. It is aimed at the teacher. The picture drawn is of a civil-servant teacher who fills the board from top to bottom with symbols only two or three students understand, speaks quietly to himself, and whose only concern is that the class stays silent copying it down. A method that, according to this line of thought, produces hatred of the subject rather than learning.
The counterargument comes quickly: if the student does not read, they do not understand. There is a revealing account of private tutoring with a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old boy who had to have the problem read to him two or three times to cope; if he read it himself, he took in nothing. The solution was to have him read the sports paper and ask him whether the player was being signed or loaned out. They can't read, they don't understand what they read, the summary goes. And it places the origin of the change in the mid-seventies, when pedagogy displaced the senior secondary school professors.
The law that forces teachers to pass students
The final stretch of the analysis is the most uncomfortable. If the student fails to acquire the knowledge and is failed, the teacher is bad. If the student is passed, the teacher is bad too, because that certifies an education the student does not have. The law, the argument goes, pushes towards the latter. And there appears the most radical proposal of the whole discussion: in compulsory education there should be no such thing as failing, because repeating a year is persecution, and every failure should trigger an investigation into the school.
It is not a peaceful idea. Against it stands the evidence that many students over sixteen remain in school not because the law requires it but because they find it comfortable, and that neither they nor their families want the exit door when it is offered. In that age range, compulsory schooling stopped being the reason long ago.
The debate that never closes: separate or integrate
The proposal that wins the most support in the discussion is to remove those who fail to reach the minimum level, channelling them into diversification programmes or specific integration centres, so as not to drag everyone else down. The argument is economic common sense: lowering the level of the whole class to accommodate those who cannot keep up produces mediocrity at scale.
The objection is there too: channelling students labels them, and labels limit. Some argue for identifying each student's type of intelligence and developing it rather than covering everything without going deep into anything. And some point out that the children of the politicians who most staunchly defend public education attend private schools for their final secondary years.
The exact point where this gets stuck is the usual one. Nobody disputes the diagnosis; what is missing is agreement on who pays the cost of the solution. If separating helps those who keep up and stigmatises those who leave, and if integrating protects those who leave and drags down those who keep up, the decision is not technical. It is political. And that is why it never gets made.
A classroom in a state-subsidised school, 30 students per class, 20% of migrant background performing exactly on par with the average, and a maths teacher who puts on the exam the very same exercises, with the same numbers, he has solved on the board. Twenty-three fail. The account, posted on a current affairs forum and attributed to the experience of a secondary school teacher with a PhD in physics, describes a class where at least two students have adapted curricula, two have an open suicide-risk protocol, two have dyslexia, two are gifted and two have ADHD. And where between ten and twelve kids never even take out their notebooks.
The scene is not an isolated case according to those who have taught in similar classrooms. The pattern repeats itself: students reaching the third year of ESO (the third year of Spain's compulsory secondary education) still counting on their fingers, passing maths year after year, and then suddenly hitting fractions and equations. The question hovering over the whole text is not pedagogical but about incentives: if the system ends up passing everyone anyway, what does failing teach?
What happens when there is no disciplinary tool
The teacher's diagnosis is blunt: there is no room for action. Shouting buys ten seconds of silence. Reporting incidents achieves nothing. Expelling a student runs into its legal status as a measure of last resort. Calling the family always gets the same answer: their child is a gem. And the head of studies, even with the unanimous complaint of the teaching staff, replies that this is just how things are.
That is the core of the problem according to this version of events: the teacher's authority has not been challenged, it has been dissolved through regulation. In parallel, school management and the inspectorate tend to side with the student and their family whenever there is a conflict. The result is a classroom where breaking the rules carries no cost, and where anyone who wants to teach competes with those who do not want to learn.
The account's final demand is not economic. No strikes, no pay rises. Discipline and standards, just that, and the recognition that neither governments nor families have any interest in bringing them back.
The 20% of migrant students performing like the average
The opening premise includes a detail worth not losing: that 20% of students of migrant background show, according to the text, academic performance at the average and behaviour no different from the rest. It is no minor detail, because it immediately defuses the crudest reading of the issue. The problem described is not ethnic; it is one of classroom culture and incentives.
Even so, the opposite objection appears later in the discussion: some claim that the behaviour and performance of certain foreign students, with specific mention of those of Maghrebi origin, is somewhat or considerably worse. It is a claim backed by no data whatsoever and one that clashes with the account's own starting point. Without figures to support it, it remains what it is: an impression, not a finding.
Lecture-style teaching and the teacher who only cares about silence
The harshest criticism is not aimed at the students. It is aimed at the teacher. The picture drawn is of a civil-servant teacher who fills the board from top to bottom with symbols only two or three students understand, speaks quietly to himself, and whose only concern is that the class stays silent copying it down. A method that, according to this line of thought, produces hatred of the subject rather than learning.
The counterargument comes quickly: if the student does not read, they do not understand. There is a revealing account of private tutoring with a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old boy who had to have the problem read to him two or three times to cope; if he read it himself, he took in nothing. The solution was to have him read the sports paper and ask him whether the player was being signed or loaned out. They can't read, they don't understand what they read, the summary goes. And it places the origin of the change in the mid-seventies, when pedagogy displaced the senior secondary school professors.
The law that forces teachers to pass students
The final stretch of the analysis is the most uncomfortable. If the student fails to acquire the knowledge and is failed, the teacher is bad. If the student is passed, the teacher is bad too, because that certifies an education the student does not have. The law, the argument goes, pushes towards the latter. And there appears the most radical proposal of the whole discussion: in compulsory education there should be no such thing as failing, because repeating a year is persecution, and every failure should trigger an investigation into the school.
It is not a peaceful idea. Against it stands the evidence that many students over sixteen remain in school not because the law requires it but because they find it comfortable, and that neither they nor their families want the exit door when it is offered. In that age range, compulsory schooling stopped being the reason long ago.
The debate that never closes: separate or integrate
The proposal that wins the most support in the discussion is to remove those who fail to reach the minimum level, channelling them into diversification programmes or specific integration centres, so as not to drag everyone else down. The argument is economic common sense: lowering the level of the whole class to accommodate those who cannot keep up produces mediocrity at scale.
The objection is there too: channelling students labels them, and labels limit. Some argue for identifying each student's type of intelligence and developing it rather than covering everything without going deep into anything. And some point out that the children of the politicians who most staunchly defend public education attend private schools for their final secondary years.
The exact point where this gets stuck is the usual one. Nobody disputes the diagnosis; what is missing is agreement on who pays the cost of the solution. If separating helps those who keep up and stigmatises those who leave, and if integrating protects those who leave and drags down those who keep up, the decision is not technical. It is political. And that is why it never gets made.
Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (284 replies).
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