Mary has been immersed in the world of examinations for the Teaching Corps for more than 10 years, while Alicia is taking them for the first time this Saturday, with her nerves on edge.
Motivated by the quality of life and stability, both were clear from the beginning of their university careers that they wanted to be part of the public education system and prepared themselves for the hard road ahead.
However, in this time they have encountered loneliness, incomprehension, self-demandingness, and a system they consider "unfair", as it depends on "luck", although all this has not been enough to take them away from their goal.
“I'm not going with the intention of getting a place this year, I'm going more to see the exam and look for a pass, because getting it the first year is almost impossible,” explains Alicia.
On the other hand, Mary, despite having taken four calls and having scored a 9 and an 8.5 on two occasions, still does not have a permanent place. This year she has decided that she will only present herself to sign, since with her current responsibilities it has been impossible for her to dedicate enough time to studying.
A solitary test that makes you feel guilty for socializing
Alicia and Mary insist that, in terms of mental health, the examinations are a very hard test that many do not value or do not understand the sacrifice they entail, because sometimes you are forced to even “suspend your life completely”, especially if you work.
The young woman explains that in the first months of study she dedicated about eight hours a day from Monday to Saturday, but in the last months she studied all day, seven days a week, with practically no rest, which prevented her from attending many plans.
“It is a rather complicated journey because your family and friends do not understand that you stop doing things because you have to study,” says Alicia. “When you are at university, your whole environment is studying, and the exam periods coincide, but now your friends are working and you spend all day studying, alone,” she adds.
“I remember having presented myself while pregnant. I had to work and study at the same time, it was a huge effort and in the end for nothing,” says Mary.
In addition, Alicia emphasizes that they carry a great responsibility because “you always want to give the note and have it go well”. Mary agrees and admits having felt guilty for taking a weekend off to spend time with her friends instead of studying.
“In the end, if you don't get a place, it's a year lost in every way, and without the certainty that you will get it in the next call,” insists the regular opponent.
A system “that does not evaluate your knowledge” and depends on luck
Both opponents agree that the system for accessing the Teaching Corps is “totally unfair”, since “they do not evaluate your knowledge, but the speed”. In just four and a half hours, the participants of the test have to perform two exams and pass them with flying colors to get closer to the goal of getting a desired place, although without guarantees that this will happen.
The first half of the test is theoretical, where the opponent has to develop two random topics, depending on the balls that come out of a random selection system.
“If you go with the 25 topics learned to perfection, great, but let's be realistic, most always leave some topic, so it becomes a matter of luck,” says Alicia. “It is paradoxical that education itself always talks about innovating and the importance of learning, but then they themselves are the first to do a development exam and that you risk everything on a topic,” she adds.
In that line, Mary also remembers the problem of subjectivity, since the members of the courts “evaluate in their own way”, despite the common correction criteria.
As a solution, both propose a test-type exam where “you really demonstrate your knowledge on several topics”, not just one or two in particular.
Meanwhile, the second part of the exam presents a case, with all kinds of problems that may arise in the classroom, so that the opponent has to resolve the situation through a program and an analysis of the context, among other things.
“It is not something logical because you are not going to have so many problems at the same time in school and in the end you always have your colleagues, with the management team and you always have manuals to consult, while in the exam everything is from memory,” explains the young opponent. “It's like what we've done all our lives, study by heart and vomit it on the exams.”
“Interim teachers should fight for some places and new ones for others”
From experience, Mary believes that one of the keys to making this system “a little fairer” would be to have two different examinations, one for internal promotion and another for new ones, so that everyone would be on an “equal footing”.
“We are all going to study, but we are not going with the same possibilities,” she says. “In my court one year there were people who got a 5 on the exam and got a place and I with a 9 was left out, all because of the merits they had.”
She also does not understand why the places are distributed by courts, as this means facing a Russian roulette of competitors. “In any case, there should be a number of places in general, not by court”, says Mary. “It happened to me one year that most of the people in my court had been working for more than 10 years, and in another court there were fewer interim teachers, but luck played against me.”
The limbo of the opponents: without a place and without a fixed course
The most veteran opponents, like Mary, have been living in job instability for years, rotating from one center to another with almost no prior notice.
“I came to visit almost all the schools in Lanzarote in a single course and in Fuerteventura the same thing happened to me,” explains the woman. “They would call you from one day to the next and you had to go running, it was crazy because maybe you were looking for a rental and after fifteen days your contract ended because the person you were replacing was joining.”
However, after 10 years working as a teacher, only in the last five has she achieved stability in a school, although she insists that she is still “in a limbo”. “It is true that now I no longer have the obligation to present myself, before if you did not do it they would throw you back on the lists, but it is true that I still have to fight for a place,” adds Mary.
For her part, Alicia tries to see the positive side, arguing that experience allows you to perform better in exams and work in what you really like along the way, even if the conditions are not the best.
“Once you get into this temporary job, the hours are more compatible with studying and in the end it is experience that is worth for the assumptions of the exam, something much more difficult to combine if you work in supermarkets or shops, for example,” says the young woman.
They denounce few changes in the system after years of complaints
The claims of these two women are not isolated cases, but many opponents have been denouncing it for years, but the system has remained without major changes, at least for the moment.
“In the end it is to put a test-type exam and that everyone fights for the same places, that we all compete with everyone, I don't understand why a change has not occurred yet,” says the veteran.
However, both Mary and Alicia plan, like many other opponents, to continue fighting for their dream of working as teachers in public schools, if there is no luck this year. Because they insist that even if you study a lot, in the end it's about that, about a bit of luck.
