Friday, March 29

Art and English will have more hours in Primary at the expense of Mathematics and Religion


More time for Art and English and less time for Religion and Math. Extremadura already has the new Primary Education curriculum on the table, which affects schoolchildren between 6 and 12 years old. It will begin to be applied from next year in 1st, 3rd and 5th and in 2023 it will reach 2nd, 4th and 6th.

At the beginning of the month, the Government published the royal decree that establishes the organization and minimum teachings of Primary, adapted to the reform of the Education Law, known as the Celaá law. In addition to the general rules, set 60% of the time. The autonomous communities must establish the remaining 40%, although with a certain autonomy in its execution by the centers.

The Ministry of Education and Employment has already completed the draft of the new curriculum, which includes both the state and the regional part and therefore configures how these teachings will be from the next school year.

The new arrangement affects more in the skills of the students and less in the acquisition of knowledge. To this end, learning standards, which marked the contents to be received, are eliminated, and issues such as learning situations appear, with a more global approach to teaching and the possibility of merging areas.

Likewise, the so-called exit profile is included, which in Secondary will mark the knowledge necessary to obtain the degree and which in Primary will guide students to move on to that stage. As a novelty, multilingual competence is included.

The diagnostic evaluation that will take place in 4th grade will also be a novelty, instead of the individual evaluation that is currently done in 3rd grade. Likewise, a new subject is created, Education in civic and ethical values, which will be taught in the last year of Primary with an assignment of an hour and a half a week, which is equivalent to two classes. This subject does not replace Religion, but in 6th year both subjects will be given. The intention is that all students take this new subject.

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The curriculum maintains religious teachings, although with fewer hours. The alternative for students who do not want to study Religion will be to receive educational attention, which according to the draft curriculum will consist of fostering transversal skills “through carrying out significant projects for students and collaborative problem solving, reinforcing self-esteem, autonomy, reflection and responsibility”.

In addition, the grades obtained in the evaluation of religion teachings will not be computed in the calls in which the academic records must enter concurrence. The Secretary General of Education of the Junta de Extremadura, Francisco Javier Amaya, points out that it will affect issues such as the transition from schools to institutes.

Likewise, the second foreign language is included, a subject that already exists as an option but that will become generalized. In the event that it is not taught, the centers may opt for a transversal area similar to an elective, such as Robotics or project work.

New schedule

With the minimum teachings established by state regulation, the Ministry of Education and Employment has drawn up a new timetable for Primary that bears many similarities to the current one but which incorporates the main novelties of the reform.

Starting next year, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences will merge into a single subject, Knowledge of the Natural, Social and Cultural Environment. The autonomous communities can choose to separate them, as at present, but Amaya points out that in Extremadura they will be offered as the same subject to respect the spirit of integration and promotion of the acquisition of skills of the new law. It maintains almost the same schedule as the current one, although with an hour less in the third cycle so that time can be available to teach Education in Civic and Ethical Values, which, as indicated, will have an hour and a half in 6th.

They will also be integrated into a single subject, although it is allowed not to do so, Music and Plastic Arts, to which Dance is now added. The new Artistic Education will be one of the great bets of the curriculum, since it will have one more hour in the first cycle (between 1st and 2nd), two in the second (3rd and 4th) and one in the third (5th and 6th). ).

The centers will have autonomy to fix this distribution, if it is done in a linear way for each course or if it affects any of them. In addition, the Secretary General of Education points out that in the community these teachings will be taught by Music teachers, since they are considered to be the only specialists in this matter.

English is also reinforced, with an additional hour in the first cycle and an additional half hour in the second. This will allow reaching three hours per week in each course. For its part, the second foreign language will have five hours throughout the stage: one in the first cycle and two in the second and third.

Spanish Language and Literature remains the subject with the most class hours, nine per cycle, which means four and a half hours per week per course, as it is today. Physical Education will also have the same hours as currently, although half an hour a week is shifted from the second to the third cycle.

To square the schedule, which must be 25 hours per week for each course (including breaks), there are two other subjects that lose class time. On the one hand, Religion, which goes from nine hours in the entire stage to seven hours. Amaya points out that an agreement has been reached so that in the first two courses two classes a week will continue to be taught, although 45 minutes each. The rest will have one hour per week.

It also loses Mathematics, which goes from 27 hours to 24 in Primary, which is equivalent to the fact that instead of four and a half hours a week, students will give four hours. In this case, the minimum proposal of the Royal Decree of the Government has been improved, which grants even less time to these teachings.


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