Education: Young failed by system in need of structural adjustment
By The Financial Times
Less than a month after furious Spanish youth unexpectedly took to the streets of Madrid to protest against the country’s political establishment, normal life is beginning to return to the city’s occupied central square.
Bemused tour groups trundle between the scores of improvised administration tents and camp sites spread around the Puerta del Sol, and men in bright yellow jackets offer to buy gold jewellery off those passing through on their journey to work.
In spite of hundreds of open meetings held by youthful activists in the squares of Madrid and other large cities, frustration has appeared to replace the initial fervour of the “indignant ones” – the name given to the young people enraged by a sense that they are being failed by a state that has allowed youth unemployment to rise to 45 per cent.
Many of the protesters hold degrees, and the number of Spaniards attending tertiary education has increased by about 7 per cent a year since 1998, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The unemployment rate for university graduates in Spain is about twice the European Union average, not helped by the country’s inflexible labour laws.
Few can deny the extent of Spain’s young unemployed “lost generation”, as tens of thousands have graduated into a stagnant economy.
As a panel comprising top businesspeople consults with the government about strategies to improve the country’s competitiveness, the crisis has also forced academics and policymakers to focus on ways that education reform can bolster the economy from the bottom up.
According to Jordi Canals, dean of the Iese business school, education reform over the coming years will be crucial to remedying economic problems.
“Education is the most important thing for the economy,” he says. “The top educational institutions are world class, but we have too few of them.”
The number of Spanish graduates in unskilled work is about 6 per cent higher than the EU average, according to a study by a Spanish knowledge and development think-tank – a factor that has formed part of the anger of those partaking in the recent protests.
Spain has two universities ranked in the world’s top 200, according to the Times Higher Educational Supplement rankings, compared with France’s four, and Germany’s 14.
Mr Canals argues that a large number of Spanish people are leaving school at the age of 18 with a lower standard of education than their western European counterparts.
As he sees it, this is a consequence of overly centralised educational institutions that are rarely accountable to students and teachers because of their close links with local and national government.
“What we should do is very clear,” he says. “We need to improve the quality of the secondary education of kids between 10 and 18, to raise the standard of basic stuff.
“In France and Germany, the skills high school graduates have who enter straight into the workforce tends to be higher.”
“Our educational institutions should be run by people who know the most about education, the teachers, rather than trade unions or non-teaching staff. Too often parents feel that the school is not their own, and this means they tend to be confrontational rather than collaborative with teachers"
Another approach to pre-university reform, designed to increase the competitiveness of younger Spaniards in the international labour market, has come in the form of state-run bilingual schools in which at least a third of all teaching time is in English.
In these schools, subjects such as music, physical education and social sciences are taught in English.
For Lucía Figar, head of education for the Madrid regional government, which has spearheaded the policy, an increase in the standards of foreign language learning is crucial to helping Spaniards catch up with other European Union members.
“Spain has not traditionally been a country with a high level of foreign language learning,” she says. “Our model has been successful in teaching pupils English as they learn in a natural way.”
For the graduate protesters in central Madrid, however, the talk of reform, and the programmes already under way, will be too late to be of any benefit to them.
“There is an important need to fine-tune the system,” says Mr Canals. “This is not a question of resources, of spending more money, but one of making the structural changes that will have an impact for the next generation.”