Today the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training has carried out a pilot test of the new test for the Evaluation of the Baccalaureate for University Access (Ebau) in 50 centers in all the Spanish autonomous communities, Ceuta and Melilla, with the exception of those governed by the Popular Party, Aragon and the Basque Country.
This pilot test, according to the Ministry, is aimed at "harmonizing the university entrance tests, which will begin to be implemented -progressively- in June 2024, with the competence nature of the new curriculum". This course the tests that will be done in June will still be identical to those that took place last year.
Each student carried out exclusively two exercises: one of a common subject and another of the compulsory subject of the modality they are studying. The students had 105 minutes to take each test (one of the novelties of the new Ebau) since, according to the same Ministry, "the reading of the exercise, its analysis and production are taken into account" and that the tests will include exercises less memory in which the student must reflect before answering.
The pilot test was carried out in a group of first year of baccalaureate from each of the selected centers since the Lomloe has not yet been implemented in the second year (it has been established first in the odd courses) and aims to analyze the degree of adaptation of the students to this type of competency test, the time established for the exercises, the comparison between the different possible models of exercises elaborated and the reliability of the correction, among other things.
In this pilot, the common subjects of the first year of high school that have a continuity in the second year were evaluated. Specifically, as common subjects, Spanish Language and Literature I, Foreign Language I (English) and Philosophy were evaluated; and, as modality subjects, Artistic Drawing I, of the Arts modality; Latin I, from the modality of Humanities and Social Sciences; and Mathematics I, of the modality of Sciences and Technology.
At the Institut Moisés Broggi in Barcelona, 29 of the 33 students taking part in the test faced the English exam (4 took the French exam). Some of the students, like Oriol, Laia and Jana, demanded "more time" to take the hearing test. At the end, they explained to Europa Press that the Listening included audios from natives with "accents from other countries" that are not English or American, to which they are more accustomed, and that it had cost them. And they added that they would have liked a little more time to take the test, since they had not been able to focus as much on other parts of the exam. Up to six Catalan centers are participating in this pilot test.
The exam, which began at 9:10 a.m. and ended at 10:55 a.m., included, among other exercises, a listening comprehension test (Listening) on access to drinking water and sanitation facilities in India that included two activities: first, the students they had to answer the correct option (among 4 possibilities) of 5 questions; Then, they had to fill in the blank space of five sentences with a word. They also faced a writing test.
Another test was reading comprehension, about the possibility of policies for dry countries to achieve water independence, and the exercises consisted of guessing an adjective, noun or verb about a description given in a sentence; seven test exercises with four possible answers, and a question exercise where students had to write a response sentence. Each correct answer added 0.20 points and at the end the students had to transfer their answers to another sheet, which is the one they handed in at the end of the exam.
The regions participating in the pilot test are: Catalonia (six centres), Principado de Asturias (five centres), Cantabria (five centres), La Rioja (five centres), the Valencian Community (five centres), Castilla-La Mancha (five centres), the Canary Islands (five centres), Navarra (three centres), Extremadura (three centres), the Balearic Islands (four centres), Ceuta (two centres) and Melilla (two centres).
