This is the overwhelming statement that a few days ago the Association spread Another School is Possible: "Schooling in a bad education system is not a choice."
When parents begin the search for a school for their children they do it thinking of many factors: proximity, compatible schedules, type of organization, facilities, "fame" of the school, experiences of acquaintances ... but really moves them, in the background, search The best possible school for children.
But nevertheless, the supposed freedom of choice is something quite unreal, a simple promise on paper, but false in practice. Of not wanting or not being able to opt for a private school, the choice is reduced to cross your fingers and try to accumulate the points necessary to enter the school chosen as the first option.
Some "cheat" to get the school their children need, and this, although questionable, shows that parents care a lot about getting the best possible education for their children.
Apart from this, there are other issues that points Another School is Possible and with which I deeply agree. There is no freedom in a bad system. And our system has a 32% school failure, a repetition rate of 36% at 15 years and frankly disappointing PISA test results.
But something more important is missing: real transparency. Parents, usually, apart from what the acquaintances can tell them, will have no more information than what the school wants to give them on a guided tour or, at most, an ideology embodied in a vague school project.
I have not yet known any school to report, as I would require any brand of appliances or my gynecologist, of their authentic success figures. As much we will know the children who have passed selectivity, the index of students who have presented on the enrolled the last course or the ranking obtained in the school in the, to put it somehow, unreliable, tests of sixth.
But they will not be offered data on the detailed evolution of students, repeaters, cases of bullying detected and their solution, children who fail to overcome objectives, class ratios, number of fixed teachers, procedures to achieve specialized care and In general, a thorough knowledge of the complete school results.
The participatory educational project, to which schools are obliged, is usually a cluster of common places not really developed, thoroughly, with palpable demonstrations and with the participation of the entire school.
And as long as these aspects do not change, as long as the conscious teachers do not find a way to become strong and break with the rules that a system that, despite the superficial commitment of modernity, continues to repeat the nineteenth-century model with some addition of computers in the classroom, while continue to evaluate with written exams and send learning fixed content for everyone, the school will remain, to some extent, deficit, which kills creativity, anachronistic and not very transparent.
The National Association Another School is Possible unites many fathers and mothers who work to achieve the modernization of the Spanish education system.
