Some 300,000 students are taking the exams starting this Monday. The first autonomous community will be Madrid, to which almost all the others will join on Tuesday. The grade inflation of recent years has raised the cut-off mark for almost a third of the courses, while with a passing grade you barely get into one in four. EL PAÍS has asked eight teachers who are or have been – most of them at least half a dozen times – for advice on what to do and what to avoid when sitting in front of the exam, and these are their answers.
The PAU data
When. The University Entrance Test (PAU) exams, to which more than 300,000 students will sit, begin tomorrow in the Community of Madrid with the Spanish Language and Literature exercise, and will end on June 11 in the afternoon, in Catalonia, with elective subjects such as Chemistry and Art History. In 15 of the 17 autonomous communities, the PAU will have concluded next Friday, in Castilla-La Mancha it will be the following week, and in Catalonia, the other.
Exercises. The PAU has four mandatory exams throughout Spain, Spanish Language and Literature; History of Spain or History of Philosophy (to choose); Foreign language (usually English); the modality subject (such as Mathematics or Latin), to which is added a fifth exercise of the co-official language in the autonomous communities that have it. In the optional phase, students can do four more exercises. The two with the highest scores are taken into account and can never harm the student.
Note calculation. The PAU grade, up to a maximum of 10 points, is extracted by combining the average grade of the Baccalaureate record (not counting Religion), which weighs 60%, and the scores from the mandatory exams, which represent the remaining 40%. Up to four points can be added to this with the optional exams.
Results. Almost all the autonomies plan to publish the scores between June 10 and 12. La Rioja will do it on the 16th, and Catalonia, on the 23rd.
