Spanish educational centers inflate the grades of high school students, but public institutes tend to give a boost to the students with the worst performance and, on the other hand, subsidized or private schools help the most advantaged students by giving them the A, which It supposes an unequal competition for those students who need a grade to access the career.
This is what the latest analysis of the Observatory of the University System (OSU) confirms, which focuses on equity in access to university, comparing high school and EBAU grades for 2022. And it does so based on the ownership of the center and the autonomous community, where enormous differences are also observed. “Since excellent grades are not reflected in entrance exams, which are the same for everyone, it can be deduced that they are inflated, that they are fictitious. It occurs in all centers, but inflation occurs to a greater extent in subsidized and private centers," says Vera Sacristán, author of the OSU study.
Sacristán concludes that the inequity of the system is so great that the high school grade should weigh less than the selectivity, which is still an objective, anonymous and equal test for all. It must be taken into account that the university entrance mark is made up of 60% of the baccalaureate and 40% of the general phase of the EBAU, which according to these statistical data would demonstrate an inequity at the entrance.
As a whole, public centers give higher percentages of lower passed grades in high school (almost 60% with grades lower than 8 compared to subsidized centers, 53% and 49% of private ones). On the other hand, private centers stand out in the highest grades: three out of ten students obtain a grade between 9 and 10 in high school. In the concerted ones the proportion drops to 24%, and in the public ones, to 18%.
This could be explained by the quality of teaching, the attention that students could receive from the school or from their families, perhaps with a high cultural background compared to families in private centers.
However, the study compares what happens next in selectivity, if those outstandings are aligned with the selectivity score. And, discounting that there could be different results due to mistakes due to nerves, very significant deviations are observed in comparison with the mark of the general phase of the entrance exams to selectivity (indistinctly called PAU or EBAU) .
High school students generally reach 21%, regardless of the ownership of the center, but this figure drops to less than 6% in the general phase of the PAUs.
In this phase, common subjects that all have studied in high school are examined: languages (Spanish, foreign and co-official if any), history of Spain and the subject of the chosen high school modality (mathematics, mathematics applied to social sciences, Latin or Fundamentals of the Arts).
In public centers, the 18% of outstanding of the institute is reduced to more than a third, 5% in the PAU. In the concerted, almost a fifth, from 24% to 5%. In the private sector, the proportion is approximately a quarter, from 27% to 8%. Therefore, although all classify as excellent above what the PAUs place, there is a 10-point difference between the public and private schools (which, indeed, obtain more students with a higher grade in the PAUs than any other group).
What happens to the lowest notes? To begin with, the selectivity fails, with less than a weighting of notes between the subjects less than 4, almost 10% of all the students who appear in Spain. Therefore, they are students who have passed the baccalaureate, but not the selectivity. In addition, in general, the difference between baccalaureate-EBAU is almost one point of difference in the group of Spanish students. The average high school grade was 7.7, while that of the general phase of the university entrance exams was 6.8.
"In general terms, in public centers there are higher percentages of lower approved high school grades, which seems to have the effect of a higher proportion of students with a grade between 4 and 5 in the general phase of the PAU," the study indicates. .
This opens the door for them to compensate it with the high school grade and obtain a sufficient grade for access to study at the university, according to the OSU analysis. In the last years of the pandemic, grades have increased in high school (and in the rest of the stages), a measure promoted by the Government to compensate for the difficulties in studying in these years.
Therefore, the percentage of students with grades below 7 has decreased compared to 2015 and those who obtain grades above that digit have increased.
The graph shows that all the centers, regardless of ownership, have a higher proportion of students with grades between 5 and 6 in the general phase than in the baccalaureate. The difference is greater in public centers than in subsidized and private ones.
The data in the report come from the Integrated University Information System (SIIU) of the Ministry of Universities and the autonomous communities and universities participate in it.
Regarding the differences between autonomous communities, the variations are also enormous, both between the autonomies and between the baccalaureates and the PAU of each autonomous region.
The study titles the chapter "lack of control of the autonomies", because the differences can be doubled in the highest qualifications. Thus, the highest percentage of outstanding grades in high school is in Murcia (28%) and is 2.2 times higher than the lowest (Illes Balears).
These differences between communities are also observed in public centers. The highest scores are given in the Canary Islands (26%) and are 2.4 times higher than in Catalonia (11%).
In the case of the concerted ones, all the communities except one (La Rioja) surpass the group of the public in granting outstanding. Some reach 36% (Canary Islands). Catalonia is located in the 29% of outstanding (compared to 10% in public).
Some communities such as Murcia, the Canary Islands and Extremadura are always at the head of high percentages of students regardless of the type of center. In this sense, the notes from the private centers in Murcia are extremely surprising. Almost half of the students get between a 9 and 10 grade in high school.
In this list, that of private centers, Catalonia would be at the opposite end of Murcia, which is accompanied by the Canary Islands and Extremadura, with 40% of outstanding, La Rioja, with 39%, or Aragón, with 36%. The completely private Catalan centers have 18% of students with outstanding marks, a proportion similar to that of public centers in Spain as a whole and lower than the average for subsidized Spanish ones.
On the other hand, almost 29% of the Catalan student body is situated in excellence, above the public average and the Spanish concerted average (24%).
In the EBAU, the differences between autonomies are also found. Young people with grades higher than 9 are six times more in Asturias than in the Balearic Islands.
In this sense, there is nine times more difference between the outstanding students of the baccalaureate and those of the PAU in some autonomies
“All these differences have clear effects when determining the university entrance mark and the admission marks in the different degree studies, since the access mark is formed 60% with the baccalaureate mark and in a 40% with the grade of the general phase of the PAU, and the admission grades are built on the access grade”, indicates the OSU study.
We are, therefore, faced with two problems of inequity in access to the university and, more particularly, in admission to careers with high demand.
The first inequity, the study continues, is caused by the substantially higher percentages of students with outstanding high school grades from subsidized private centers and, even more so, from unsubsidized private ones. Their high percentages of outstanding high school students are not reflected in the general phase of the PAU, but they end up weighing 60% in their university entrance grade, which skews the university admission grades.
The second inequity is caused by the differences, not only in the outstanding marks of the baccalaureate, but also in those of the general phase of the EBAU between the different autonomous communities.
