In the cold streets of Reinosa they are worried about Donald Trump. As in the world, but more than the average. The population of southern Cantabria lives largely from a great steel factory, which the neighbors continue to call the Naval or simply “the factory”, although its name is now Forgings & Castings. On it, on the municipality, and over the entire region, fear passes. The topic is spoken here everywhere, also in the Montesclaros Public Institute, a reference center in professional training studies linked to the industry, implanted half a century ago. The kids do practices in the factory, and many have work on it, like their parents and grandparents. They are in a certain way, says its director, “children of the factory”, which has about 700 employees, 900, if the split that maintains the previous name of Sidenor is added, which is equivalent to more than 10% of the 8,570 inhabitants of Reinosa.
Of the 670 students of the Montesclaros Institute, 200 study at one of its three levels. One of them, Eder, is an example of the change he is experiencing. If it were the option to which the institutes sent to the kids who were going wrong so that they could finish the ESO (which is still the main reason for their classrooms to reach), to be a way in which the students themselves can also request to be ascribed because they prefer a more practical teaching. To do this, they must meet some requirements, such as being 15 years old, Eder’s age. “There are theoretical classes here, but we also go to the workshop. It is more entertaining than being in class all day,” he says. When the two courses last by the degree, the adolescent hopes to do the average and the superior machining. And then, enter to work “in the Naval de Reinosa”, like his father and his brother. Waiting for the effects that the trade war declared by the United States may have, its expectations is not far -fetched. The labor insertion of the graduates in FP in the Montesclaros is around 90%, says the head of Studies Antonio Díez, and one of the problems with which the teaching staff is to deal is that they often hire them before finishing the upper cycle. The relationship with the industrial fabric of the area is so close that sometimes it is the technicians of the factories that approach the modern workshops of the institute to repair the machinery.
The basic degree FP initially generated rejection between the left. In the same way that the curricular diversification programs – which are aimed at kids with learning difficulties and imply an adaptation of the contents – did so in the ranks of the right. Both educational paths – especially among the boys, who are the ones who fail.
The country has reduced its early school abandonment rate (young people from 18 to 24 years old who are very much and are not studying) to the historical minimum of 13%, when in 2014 it was 22%, and in 2004, of 32%. And has raised to 80%the percentage of the population between 20 and 24 years that has ended, at least, post -lummy secondary education (medium -grade baccalaureate or FP) when in 2014 it only reached 66%, and in 2004, 61%. In both cases, although it has improved, foreign students have worse data (in early educational abandonment, 29.5%). Cantabria has the lowest abandonment rate (5.5%) after the Basque Country (5%). And the highest percentage of young people aged 20 to 24 who have ended at least the upper high school (90%, such as Euskadi).
In parallel to the reduction of school failure, Basic FP students have increased 32% since its implementation in 2015, almost triple what the number of ESO students has grown, until it is touched by 62,000. And in the first year of his reimplantation, 8% of the third -party kids studied in the curricular diversification program.
The basic FP initially generated misgivings on the left because it is segregator. In part because, with the first design made by the PP, finish it did not involve obtaining the title of the ESO, recalls Alonso Gutiérrez, responsible for the Cabinet of Studies of the CC OO Teaching Federation. Catalonia, for example, refused to implement it, and its weight in Catalan educational centers has been testimonial so far; Something that the Generalitat, chaired by the socialist Salvador Illa, has decided to change, folding, up to 2,000, the number of new entry places next course.
The curricular diversification programs did not like the PP, which in the previous educational law reorganized them by placing them in second and third of the ESO (instead of third and fourth, as they were until then). This caused the kids to return to the ordinary ESO in the last year, so many crashed and failed to title. After the approval of the LOMLOE and the return to the original courses scheme, the percentage of students enrolled in these programs has increased rapidly until bending to the one with the PP regulations. And four of the five autonomies where more weight has reached diversification are governed by the PP (Canary Islands, Extremadura, La Rioja and Andalusia; in La Quinta, Castilla-La Mancha, there are the Socialists).
Almost everyone continues to study
Moisés Sánchez, 39, gives class of diversification, in the field-the grouping of subjects that characterizes the program-linguistic-social of the Az-Zait Public Institute of Jaén. “The main difference with ordinary groups is that although all students should have personalized attention, with these students it is even more important, and that can only be achieved with small ratios. I have nine students when in a standard class I would have 27 ″. The dedication that demands a more competence teaching, in which all the contents are linked to real life, makes the effort, with everything, greater than in an ordinary class, he says. Standard group would have complicated to finish, while here the success percentage is close to 100%, and most continue to study an average FP cycle. ”
The basic degree of FP continues to receive criticism by segregator, although less and less. “As long as there is a teacher, a family or a student who thinks that basic degree professional training is worse, we will be as categories as when we thought that professional training as a whole was a second way with respect to Baccalaureate and the University,” says the former secretary general of FP Clara Sanz. “Basic grade students acquire the same output competences as in ESO and, in addition, they obtain a first professionalizing degree. And it is not for bad students, but for those who do not want such an academic way, but prefer to learn by doing.”
