The average selectivity mark has increased from 8.75 out of 14 in 2015/2016 to 10.34 in 2021/2022. A rise that is registered in all the autonomous communities. What has motivated this increase? Is it real and the result of effort or artificial and conditioned by decisions external to the students and their efforts? This is what the report The rise in selectivity grades has tried to resolve: inflation or competition? UNED Juan Manuel Moreno. And the conclusion is not a single answer, but that the increase in grades responds to a sum of factors.
For the analysis, the researchers used a “unique and unexplored to date” database: the Integrated University Information System of the Ministry of Universities and tried to find out if the increase in grades was due to an artificial push (“hypothesis of the inflation”) or if it is caused by real improvements derived from greater competition, effort and learning on the part of students (“competition hypothesis”). And the analysis concluded that the competition hypothesis weighs as much as the inflation hypothesis to explain the rise.
During the pandemic, in the year 2020, measures were taken to compensate for the closure of schools. More options were given in the answers to the Selectivity questions that led to a “more benevolent evaluation”. These measures had an "inflationary" effect, the report notes, and although they made sense during the pandemic, the study authors believe they should be repealed.
But there is also more competition. Thus, the data on the Selectividad of almost a million and a half students who took it between 2013 and 2020, show that the increase in qualifications is explained both by "the emergence of an increasingly competitive environment and by a dynamic inflation of the notes as a result of political decisions". The crucial change from a Selectividad to 10 to 14 thanks to the creation of the specific (optional) test in 2017, as well as the simultaneous rise in cut-off marks, the increase in students who take the test and who also aspire to the highest grades have created a competitive environment that, for example, has led 92% in 2022 to take part of the test that was created in 2010 as optional.
In the case of the Baccalaureate transcript (the second of the three parts of the final admission grade that grows the most after the specific test), the incentives created by raising the transcript grade from 50 to 60% in the year 2000 , the changes in the general test in 2017 (which reduced the optionality of the general phase and caused an increase in the Bachillerato grades) and the exceptional measures in the face of the pandemic for the Bachiller evaluation, had a "clear" upward effect.
In this way, and without denying inflation, the changes in the test format and its scoring system have generated more options to increase grades "there is also more preparation, more students competing, and with the bar rising in cut-off notes".
