The province of Buenos Aires will implement changes in the high school starting in 2025, as announced today by the general director of Culture and Education, Alberto Sileoni. One of the most notable points is that a full year will no longer be repeated, but only failed subjects will be retaken. The changes include a new academic regime and, over the next year, the preparation of new curricular designs.
Among the central points of the reform, it is established that the accreditation of knowledge will be “by subject”, with numerical ratings quarterly: a format more similar to that of the university level. This change implies that there will no longer be repetition of a year as a whole (“cycle”): students They will not have to retake the approved subjects.
“High school needed a important change. In the current system you credit by subject but repeat in blocks. It is time to get out of that matrix: there are several provinces and educational systems in other countries that have already left it behind,” said Sileoni when presenting the initiative, which was unanimously approved by the General Council of Education of the province.
The minimum passing grade will be 7and the two quarters will not be averaged: it will be mandatory approve each. “Today there is a conceptual system that becomes numerical at the end of the semester. “We decided to return to a strictly numerical system from the beginning, like the one before the pandemic,” said the Buenos Aires minister.
According to the new academic regime, failed subjects “are taught and studied more because intensify or recur until the students acquire the knowledge.” When presenting the initiative, the provincial government indicated that this new form of accreditation seeks to “value the effort and achieve more learning.”
Before having to appeal, students will go through a “intensification period”. There will be four periods of 15 days at the beginning and end of each semester, in December and February. For this reason, the provincial government stated that the reform provides “more school time”, especially for those students who have more difficulties.
“Before, students did that task lonely. Now there will be more resources from the State so that in this transition in which they have to prepare to perform the kids are accompanied, something that the middle class solves with private teachers. Everything pending has to be intensified. The only difference is that the school is going to accompany them in that instance and is not going to leave them alone,” Sileoni explained.
Students will be able to “intensify” up to four failed subjects; If they have five or more pending subjects, they must define which one(s) they are going to intensify (up to 4) and which ones they are going to retake. Among other novelties, it is planned to form a “Educational Pathways Definition Team” (EDTE), which will guide students and families with these decisions. This team will be made up of teachers, directors and a preceptor from the school, as well as a “path coordinator” teacher.
The initiative, called “It is more secondary”, collects “the proposals raised by teachers, students, school principals” and recovers “good experiences already implemented,” reported the provincial government. The new forms of qualification, evaluation and accreditation of subjects will be applied in March 2025.
In addition, there will be special support for the freshmen in his “construction of the student profession” in the transition from primary school. “We are working on didactic sequences of Language and Mathematics for the articulation between primary and secondary school,” Sileoni anticipated to Infobae.
It is also planned to design specific training proposals for students of the last year (sixth), oriented to articulation with the higher level and the “construction of vocations”, according to the presentation document prepared by the Provincial Directorate of Secondary Education. The “digital notebook” so that students and families “have direct access to grades.”
The general director of Culture and Education assured that the reform will be accompanied with more investment from the provincial state in positions and 30,000 teaching modules for support in periods of intensification, replicating the experience of the “FORTE modules” (strengthening educational trajectories) applied during the pandemic.
In 2025 they will also open 3,000 contests so that directors and vice directors title their positions. Regarding this measure, they explained that, as shown by the Learn 2023 testthe “seniority in office” of school directors is a factor that is strongly associated with better learning.
Regarding the reform of the curriculum designsSileoni anticipated that this “will be next year’s task” and noted that they will do it “with consensus and participation of the schools.” Among other issues, they plan to reduce the number of subjects.
For a later stage, Sileoni stated that they hope to move forward with reducing the problem of “taxi teachers” through the concentration of class hours in the same school, with the aim of strengthening the institutional belonging of teachers.
The debate on the elimination of repetition usually raises alarms regarding the “ease”. However, several specialists agree that repetition does not favor learning. This is also shown by the evidence from standardized tests, such as the latest Learn test.
“It’s not an easier path: It is a system that generates more responsibilities and more support, and that seeks to improve learning. Nobody is going to pass a subject if they do not have the knowledge – Sileoni assured Infobae–. Repetition, which has been around for 100 years in the Argentine educational system, must be rethought. He who repeats does not learn more. There is an absolute coincidence that the repetition school dropout increases”.
The results of Learn 2023 show that in Language The percentage of sixth grade students who obtain the lowest performance levels represents 30.1% among those who never repeated a grade, and now represents 55.1% among those who repeated once: almost double. In Mathmeanwhile, goes from representing 45.4% to 69.6%.
According to the Learn report, prepared by the current Undersecretary of Information and Educational Evaluation of the Nation and presented last week“this situation raises again the discussion about the ‘remedial’ effect of repetitiondebated in different jurisdictional, national and international spheres.”
“The relationship between repetition and academic results is observed at all socioeconomic levels, both in Language and Mathematics. That is, in all cases increases the percentage of students performing below the basic or basic level among those who repeated their grade (once or twice),” warns the national report. And it points out that the difference is greater between students of medium and high socioeconomic level, with gaps of more than 20 points, both in Language and Mathematics.
