The experts from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in charge of preparing the Report of the International Program for the Evaluation of Students (PISA for its acronym in English) assure that the educational community of the Canary Islands "lacks self-criticism" regarding the problems in teaching in the Islands.
This group of experts has spent the last week touring the Archipelago with the commission made by the autonomous executive to carry out an in-depth report that will enable a change in the educational system of the Islands to improve school failure.
The OECD delegate for the PISA Report, Mihaylo Milovanovitch, explained that in the hundred people with whom they met, they detected common issues. "Absolutely all the interlocutors had many ideas, they have always talked about school failure, but they have made little self-criticism," he said.
Thus, he clarified that "although everyone asked what others can do to improve, not what I can do." However, he clarified that this lack of self-criticism is not an endemic evil of the Islands, but that "it happens in the Canary Islands and in the rest of the world."
The OECD delegation that has visited the Islands has committed to preparing a report that they will deliver at the end of September proposing exclusive changes for the Canary Islands. "We will not enter the Spanish educational system," Milovanovitch said.
Although they specified that it is still too early to draw preliminary conclusions from their visit, they did insist that the Canarian educational system must put the student at the center of everything. "We have to talk about how to attend to those who are lagging behind," they explain. In that sense, they suggest that the fault that these students fail, "is not theirs but the system's."
Milovanovitch, accompanied by other members of the OECD delegation, offered a press conference after meeting with the president of the Government of the Canary Islands, Paulino Rivero, at the headquarters of the Presidency of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, in what would be his last act within the visit they have made to the Islands.
In this meeting, another of the OECD members, Caroline McReady, announced that "in the report we will emphasize that the fundamental thing is to take into account the students and their interests." "Students have to value the education they receive in the classrooms as something important," she added.
The important thing is, according to McReady, that "everyone in the system assumes their guilt: authorities, centers and teachers." However, they clarify that "students have the knowledge but do not know how to apply it, for example in solving a mathematical problem or when they perform a critical reading." "Experience in other countries teaches us that the learning of knowledge is not the same as the application of that knowledge."
Milovanovitch, for his part, announces that the report they will make "is going to be a challenge in which we say everything we have to say." Even so, he announces that "educational reform is a difficult and complex process."
ACN Press
