Spelling is the battle horse in the teaching of the written language, a horse discussed for its usefulness from some educational sectors because computer spell checkers can fill this function at the time of writing. Despite the pedagogical discussion, the basic skills tests evaluate the spelling correctness shown by the students, both those in the 6th grade of primary school and those in the 4th grade of ESO. It does not include children and teenagers who have recently joined school, nor those with cognitive disorders (dyslexia is included).
According to the results obtained in this year's edition, which corresponds to students who passed the test in May (and which excludes students who have just arrived, as well as those who have cognitive difficulties, except for dyslexia), the difficulty it seems to start in elementary school and creep into middle school.
In primary school, half of the students have a low proficiency in spelling, worse in Catalan than in Spanish. "Among the different aspects that are evaluated in written expression (adequacy, coherence, spelling, morphosyntax and presentation), the one that gets the lowest results is still spelling, with 56.6% of students who do not they pass it in Catalan and 49.4% in Spanish", indicates the report Quaderns d'evaluação 2023 on the basic skills tests for children in the 6th grade of primary school, around 12 years old, and who this year are taking 1st of the 'ESO. More than half in Catalan and almost half in Spanish (which has improved by ten points compared to 2022) make more than eight mistakes in a text.
When they finished ESO, 90% of the students made at least one mistake in writing Catalan. Or, to put it another way, only 10% obtained a maximum grade. They are the boys who are ideally 16 years old and this year they are graduating from high school or FP. "This is the area that presents the worst results", admits the text of the 2023 Assessment Forms regarding written expression. It is also in Spanish, more than 83% handed in the text with some inaccuracy.
In Catalan, the majority of students write with few mistakes if a maximum of eight mistakes is considered acceptable. 66% of the students are here. Of the latter, 31% did not make a mistake or did so on less than three occasions. The rest (33%) exceeded nine faults, with a peak of 16% with more than twelve faults.
This group of young people with many mistakes raised the average of mistakes committed per student to seven per text.
The results are similar to those obtained in 2022. On the other hand, in Spanish they have improved, they have a superior performance.
The average number of absences per student in Spanish is 4.7. And eight out of ten students write with fewer than eight mistakes. The worst performance is with 5%, who write texts with more than twelve mistakes.
Spelling is one of the areas assessed within linguistic correction, which also includes morphosyntax and vocabulary. In this case, between 20% and 30% of students get four points out of four.
The test is completed with the evaluation of the discursive competence. Half of those who presented themselves show full ability to write a text suitable for the communicative purpose in Catalan, although only 35% in Spanish. On the other hand, the students were less qualified when it came to writing a cohesive text. Less than 20% obtained the maximum score in either language.
Written expression is one of the dimensions of linguistic competence that in Catalan obtained an average of 72.7 in primary school, and in Spanish, of 72.1. These averages are quite homogeneous in the territory, but there are differences of up to four points between some educational zones and others.
The schools in the city of Barcelona have the highest scores (74.4 in Catalan and 74.2 in Spanish) and have a higher percentage of excellent students. Those in Lleida, Terres de l'Ebre, Baix Llobregat and Maresme-Vallès Oriental are also more competent than average.
Conversely, below Barcelona are Gironès, Central Catalonia and Tarragonès. Vallès Occidental is below it in Catalan, but above it in Spanish.
