The recent selection process to appoint over a thousand tenured teachers for state schools in the Canaries has failed to fill all the posts, prompting demands for a review of the exam system used for selection.
The region’s Department of Education has acknowledged that approximately 90 of the 1100 available posts have not been filled as not enough candidates passed the tough set of tests.
The competitive tests are held nearly every year and tend to be heavily oversubscribed in terms of applicants, which is understandable given that success brings a job for life in the state schools system. It is believed that approximately 10,000 applicants attempted the tests this summer, many of them preparing for them for up to a year.
Preliminary results for this summer’s selection process are largely similar to previous years, when just 19% of candidates made it through the first stage. In some disciplines, only 5% of those who sat the first exam were successful.
Teaching unions say the “alarming” results show clearly that the process is not fit for purpose and needs to be overhauled and replaced by a fairer and more transparent selection system to secure stable employment for teachers.
The unions insists that the tests set are out of touch with the classroom realities of today and the various assessing tribunals, drawn at random from existing tenured teachers, do not apply assessment criteria uniformly.
The criticisms are shared in part by the Canarian Department of Education, where director general for personnel Mónica Ramírez admitted that the authorities were unhappy with the results. “Similar results have been seen in other parts of the country and show that the procedure, which is decided by the education ministry at national level, needs to be looked at carefully” she said.
The failure to fill all available vacancies will be of concern to head teachers, who face the prospect of beginning the new school year with insufficient staff and will need to wait for temporary appointments to be made to cover the classes affected.
Picture of teachers registering for exams. Credit: Canarian Department of Education
