The Department of Education, Universities and Employment has announced that students diagnosed with dyslexia will not be penalized for their spelling mistakes in non-linguistic areas in university entrance tests. Likewise, it works so that these adaptations are also effective during the two years of Baccalaureate.
This was announced this Tuesday by the Minister of Education, José Antonio Rovira, together with Concha Barceló, president of Trenca-dis, an association committed to dyslexia and other DEA (Specific Learning Difficulties), the general director of Innovation and Inclusion Education, Xaro Escrig, and the general director of Universities, José Antonio Pérez.
In this way, natural spelling errors will not be taken into account, such as the omission of letters (Ex: Los Reyes Católico instead of Católicos), the substitution of some graphemes for others with similar sound (Ex: empellado for empeñado), the transpositions of graphemes (e.g. nobelza for nobility) or the mixture of lowercase and uppercase letters. Those considered arbitrary fouls (use of h, b/v, g/j, ll/y and x/s) will not be penalized either.
Furthermore, in the EBAU tests, students with dyslexia will only be penalized for spelling mistakes regulated in the linguistic areas - Spanish and Valencian - up to 2/3 of the total score and a maximum of 3 points. The rules for using r/rr, m/n, c/qu, z/c, g/gu, güe/güi or -z/-d fall into this group.
The Minister of Education has highlighted this measure of "justice" that represents an "important" step in the inclusion of all students and the elimination of access barriers and has announced that it is intended to continue advancing in inclusion with the extension of this adaptation during high school.
This decision has been made following the conclusions of a technical report carried out by the Specialized Guidance Unit of Dénia, which is a specialist in attention deficit disorders and other specific learning difficulties. In this regard, the general director of Educational Innovation and Inclusion, Xaro Escrig, has indicated that the changes focus on how the tests will be corrected based on this technical report. "It is an important step in educational inclusion and we will continue working to achieve equity in the educational system."
For her part, the president of Trenca-dis has thanked the Department for its work to "make" this measure a reality and has stressed the importance of incorporating this adaptation because, as she explained, people with dyslexia are "blind" to the spelling mistakes.
"Their lexical store does not recognize the shape of the words and this does not mean that they do not make an effort, but rather that they are not able to have a graphic representation of the words in their head, so if they write a word that they have doubts about, ' b' and with 'v' they are not able to identify the one that resonates most with them, because neither of them resonates with them," Barceló assured.
In this sense, he has asserted that spelling mistakes "do not have to be a condition" to "achieve a good future or to achieve your dream of studying the career you want and contributing to society" and has highlighted that teachers person in charge of correcting the EBAU exams is informed of the regulations and takes into account "the content and not the form".
Likewise, he has indicated that dyslexia is a learning disorder that affects around 10 percent of the population: "In a classroom we can find one or two students with dyslexia, being the most prevalent learning difficulty in our system. In addition, there are students who are not detected and who therefore are not given the appropriate response, and who join the lists of school failures and dropouts," stated the president of Trenca-dis.
This novelty in the correction of the tests is added to other adaptations for these students, such as giving 25% more time to take the exams, the possibility of having the questions read aloud to better interpret the statement and be a support classroom if they wish, where they can have more peace of mind to take the exam.
In addition, the EBAU tests have different adaptation criteria for students with specific educational support needs such as hearing, visual or motor disabilities, among others.
