A boy in shirt and shorts is a bit clutch at the classroom 101 of the Southern Aulament of the Tarongers Campus of the University of Valencia, where some 60 students are already waiting to start the first. “No, I’m not nervous. But I have to enter now,” In the first row of a nearby class, a teenager kisses a bracelet, bites the nails while listening to the instructions of the Castilian language and literature exercise, the test with which the new test of access to the University (PAU) is released in 15 autonomous communities, which arrives with the aura that will be the most difficult selectivity of recent years.
In the hall, three institute teachers who have accompanied the kids confirm this impression. Is this year’s exam more complex? “There is less optivivity,” replies a teacher. “In the history exam in Spain they have folded the agenda,” adds another. “The notes are going to go down, because they can choose less,” the third affects. “Sooner or later they had to do it, because it had reached a point that also did not make sense; I, for example, now could not study physics,” summarizes the teacher, referring to the notes of recent years.
At the exit of the first exam, disparate encouragement can be seen. Luis has soon finished the language exam and is satisfied. “It has been easier than I thought. We thought Lorca was going out, and it has come out,” he says. A little further on, on the exit ladder of the orange brick building seen, another student, on the other hand, shouts with three friends: “But how Lorca comes out, bro!”.
La, except in the Canary Islands, where he will do it on Wednesday, and Catalonia (June 11). 300,000 students are expected to perform the PAU, which will last between three and four days, with up to four years in the first two days of 90 minutes each.
Last minute review
From 7.30, on the campus of the Complutense University of Madrid, dozens of groups pass the pages of their notes. Others prefer to take refuge alone, in a bank or under a tree, with the helmets put until it is the time of the evaluation. Not a few have a scare face. Jaime Junco Díaz studies with a friend under chestnut trees. “I was not nervous the previous days, but today,” he admits. Junco Díaz wants to enter the physiotherapy career, this Tuesday has examinations of Castilian language and philosophy. “These do not get so well, in the end it is to study the agenda and already. The same in chemistry goes with a little more fear,” he adds.
The change in this year’s exam format, which incorporates 25% of competence questions (more applied), is for the student a good measure. “Now the effort is rewarded more and you get more prepared to the university,” he argues. “Before you could study 40% of the agendas and get a good note.”
First of the hour, at the door of the Faculty of Chemical Sciences, the Vice Chancellor for Students of the Complutense, Rosa de la Fuente, explains that it is understandable that the students are concerned about the change of model, but that when they leave the exam they would not think the same. “It has not really changed so much, we have simply wanted to reduce the number of questions that are content reproduction,” he says. Beside them, the students pile up to enter the classrooms and start the exam.
Nine out of ten students manages to approve the PAU. But for those who want to access the most requested races, the notes have shot in many cases above the 12 out of 14, which is the maximum score that can be achieved if the general phase is added to the
Before the students arrive at the Complutense, where 12,588 young people are expected to perform the PAU, at the Moncloa Metro station, in Madrid, endless students advance between nervous cries and tight notes in folders full of leaves. Inside the car, a girl sighed while reading a handmade graphic on Spanish modern literature. Her father, standing in front of her, reassured her by telling her that everything was going to go perfectly. A screaming barahund was heard in the car: “Uncle, it cannot be that it is today”; “I will not talk after the examination of how it has gone; done, sandwiches and keep studying”; “Last night with Maria we did not succeed, we invented any number of names”, “How it cost me sleeping tonight!”
Four hours of daily study
Alejandra Tubío, student of the Néstor Almendros de Tomares Public Institute in Seville, confessed her nerves before the exam in the Andalusian capital. But at the exit I was happy. This course has studied four hours daily during the week and seven a day on weekends, so that the note is reached to study biology or psychology. “I am a registration of honor,” he warns. “The old model seemed better because I had more options to choose from. In theory it was easier,” he adds.
The professors Fernando García and Ana Barba assured, at the exit of the language exam in Seville, that this year the kids have ended, in general, without overwhelms, in time, unlike previous years: “It was normal to have to tear the exams of their hands, because there was a theoretical question about literature and now they are three short issues,” explains Barba. The exercise, common for Andalusia, Ceuta, Melilla and the Centers of Morocco, included, among other questions, the Editorial of El País Have a job Posted in October, and The back room, by Carmen Martín Gaite, and The tree of the science of Pío Baroja, in literature.
Cristina Alfonso and Desiré Zaragoza leave the Tarongers campus in Valencia, at the end of the first day. In summary, the competence questions of the economy exam, in which they had to characterize a company from a series of data, and make a recommendation to another firm that was raised to transfer their headquarters, have seemed interesting and affordable, and the exercise, in general, easy. The Castilian language and history of the morning philosophy, on the other hand, have seemed complicated; “We could choose some questions, but within the same sections.” Alfonso wants to study teaching, and Zaragoza, economy. But neither is clear if you will get a place. “It will depend”, they coincide “on Thursday’s mathematics exam.”
