All educational centers supported by public funds from the Community of Madrid, including those that participate in the bilingualism program, will teach the subject of geography and history in Spanish starting in the next academic year 2024/25. This was announced yesterday by the Minister of Education, Science and Universities, Emiliano Viciana, at an informative breakfast. These measures limit the bilingual model of the Community of Madrid, which has been in operation for 20 years. In this way, the core subjects, which include language and mathematics, will be taught in Spanish. And the English language will remain for the optional subjects.
This is one of the measures included in the Plan for a Free, Plural and Quality Education of the Community of Madrid on which the Ministry of Education is working and which will be presented in the month of January. “We want to reinforce the study of history and prevent its own contents from being reduced by teaching them in English,” said Viciana. In her opinion, until now "there has been a detriment to both knowledge of history and English."
To this end, the general directorate of bilingualism will soon issue an order that will update the 2017 order and will establish the obligation for the nearly 400,000 students in bilingual public schools and institutes to take these subjects in Spanish starting next year.
The counselor explained that the foreign language hours that will be free after excluding this subject will be used to teach "electives in English, adapted to the level of each student and with special emphasis on oral expression."
It will be the centers that choose them, but, in no case, can they be those for language or mathematics reinforcement. In addition, English will also be included, along with Geography and History, in the diagnostic tests carried out in 4th and 6th grade of primary school and 2nd and 4th grade of ESO.
In this way, attention will be paid to a certain extent to the report of the Federation of Pedagogical Renewal Movements of Madrid and the Educational Action Pedagogical Renewal Movement, which stated that more than 80% of teachers assured that the bilingual education implemented in the Community of Madrid since 2004 with Esperanza Aguirre as president reduced the depth of the contents.
Organizations such as the OECD and the Council of Europe and the recent results of the PISA study indicate that educational qualifications are declining.
