Things I don't like about living in Spain, Part III

These last couple of weeks at work have been exhausting. And there is one thing in particular I blame for us having to run around madly at the Academia, preparing work at the last minute for desperate students, and that is the Spanish Education System.

Now, I'm well aware that if it weren't so bad, I possibly wouldn't have a job, but when a student (B) comes to you and says he has to take a resit in five days time because the teacher has lost his final exam papers you do begin to despair.

We have numerous cases at the moment of students who have to take resists next week. In some cases it's because they've been lazy all year, failed previous exams, and really, they deserve it and hopefully will learn a lesson (although you do have to wonder why they've been lazy; it seems it's often because the teacher has failed to make any effort to make the lesson interesting, so the students just don't want to learn).

Another example, take N. He'd failed a couple a of exams throughout the year which is normal for the average student, they have to sit so many (and this is another point about the system here - there's an exam for every unit in the course book, about nine, plus end of term exams. I thought the idea behind education was to instill a love of learning, here all they instill is a hatred and a fear of never-ending exams), and needed to pass the final exam to be able to move up a year in September. He turned up at the Academia two week before the last exam. We ran about finding work for him to do, explained the grammar, and he knuckled down to it. He passed the final exam, but because of the previous fails has now been informed he still has to do the resit. No wonder some students ask why they should bother.

And this isn't just at the schools. My boss, when she was at university, took three years to pass one module simply because her lecturer took a personal dislike to her. (This wasn't uncommon apparently - she'd often tell people not to come in for the next lecture, wearing, for example, 'that horrible cardigan'. Who do these people think they are?) She went to see the dean, who told her he couldn't do anything about the problem and it was only in the third year after she'd been failed again by the miserable lecturer that he arbitrarily decided to pass her anyway.

We have an adult student, J, a music teacher who  had been taking an two-year English course at Oviedo University which would have given him a qualification to teach English to infants. He put so much effort into this, wrote wonderful stories in English and taught with them, and was told recently in a letter that was sent to all the students on the course that everyone had passed. A week later, he got another letter to say that he and another student had in fact, not passed, but failed. When he asked for an explanation he was told simply that his work had been insufficient. They took two years to tell him this and he's shattered. The worst thing is that his tutor, who failed him, is head of department and he has no other recourse.

There are no rules to this, it all works on the individual teacher's whim, which is what most gets my goat. We've had students this week who haven't known if they've passed or not and have been waiting in limbo to see if they have to take the resit - which is only a few days away. I find it highly unjust that a child's educational welfare rests as much on how they get on with the teacher as their academic ability. In the case of B (who struggles with English but who's been making more effort this year), he's had trouble with his teacher all year and I find it highly suspicious that his exam papers have mysteriously gone missing. Even if it's true, what does this tell us about the teacher?

In the case of those sitting their baccalaureate this year, we've had our work cut out for us since almost the start. Because most of the class (at the high school) was misbehaving, the teacher refused to teach. He just sat in class and handed out work, with no explanation other than 'look in your course books'. He took the biscuit towards the end of the year when we were doing his teaching for him on the last unit in the book: he suddenly announced that he wasn't going to set an exam for that unit after all but that the final exam would be on the Monday of the following week. Needless to say we spent many extra hours finding work and giving classes to those students - although we did work a minor miracle and all but one passed.

I could go on endlessly, these are just the worst examples that spring to mind at the moment. The problem is that teachers are not held accountable. There are no exam boards and every exam is set and marked by the individual teacher. There are good teachers, and great ones, although they currently seem to be in the minority. I finish work in two weeks - in theory. However, our summer is now getting booked up by students who have to take the last-chance resit in September - it looks like my days on the beach and in the mountains this summer will be limited.

I therefore place The Spanish Education System onto my bad things about Spain list, where it shall deservedly stay until somebody instigates a major upheaval in the way children are taught, I'm keeping my fingers crossed, but I'm not holding my breath.