The low success rate of the public exam for mathematics teachers in Spain. Opinions of some board members
Lidon Moliner1*, Gil Lorenzo-Valentin2 , Francisco Alegre3
1Dr. Lidon Moliner, Universitat Jaume I, SPAIN, mmoliner@uji.es
2Dr. Gil Lorenzo-Valentin, Universitat Jaume I, SPAIN, valentin@uji.es
3Dr. Francisco Aegre, Universitat Jaume I, SPAIN, falegre@uji.es
*Corresponding Author
Abstract
In the year 2021 more than 720 secondary mathematics teaching posts will not be covered as not enough teachers have been able to pass the public examination in Spain. The approximate percentage of full-time jobs that went uncovered for some of the regions in the country are as follow. Over 168 in the Valencian Community (39%), 183 in Catalonia (30%), 250 in Madrid (42%), 88 in Castilla-La Mancha (50%), 18 in Andalusia (2.5%) and 11 in the Canary Islands (7%). The success rate is very low as hardly 20% of the registered teachers that took the exam could pass the first part of the exam. The main objective of this work was to find the reasons why this phenomenon takes place. To this purpose, the opinions of five members of one of the examination boards in the country were coded and analysed. The nature of this research was purely qualitative and the information was obtained through semi-structured individual interviews with each of the members. Results suggest that most mathematics teachers do not experience a strong need for passing the exam, so they don’t study as hard as they should. Most of them will work full-time for the next year no matter how they do it in the exam. The members also point at the fact that, the difficulty of the exam has not changed significantly in the last 10 to 15 years, but in the last three years the number of posts offered is extremely higher compared to previous years. For instance, from 2011 to 2018 hardly 55 posts were offered in the Valencian Community, but in 2019 and 2021 over 1000 posts were offered. Hence, no matter how many jobs are offered, if the success rate was very low 15 years ago, now it’s quite similar. The main difference is that back in the day very few posts were offered and almost none of them went uncovered. Nowadays it’s very impressive because an important percentage of job posts are not covered, but the success rate has been quite stable through the years. The main conclusions are that most mathematics teachers do not experiment a strong need to pass the exam as they will work full-time next year and that the success rate, although somewhat higher recently, has not changed significantly in the last 15 years.
Keywords: Mathematics teachers, public exam, Spain
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