The Ministry of Education and Vocational Training has just held the Forum “Educating for the 21st Century. Challenges and proposals for the teaching profession” , in which initiatives were presented to improve the teaching profession for the future.
Under the hashtag #YoSoyProfe, the Ministry proposed creating a virtual participation space with the aim of "channelling citizens' proposals and suggestions on the teaching profession" , as stated on the organisation's website. But the controversy is in full swing, as evidenced by social media this week, where the initiative has not gone down too well. Rather than collecting teachers' proposals, Twitter witnessed the multiple protests of teachers who complained about promoting this educational meeting during school hours and with a greater presence of politicians and educational experts who do not teach in schools.
If we look at social media, it can be seen that the forum does not end up laying the foundations for a deep reform of the education sector, which has been the main demand of the teaching community for months. Twitter has once again given space to all the voices of the sector, and both anonymous teachers and educational entities and associations of the sector have expressed their opinion. The absence of teachers in the forum was one of the complaints of the collective of temporary teachers of Murcia through its spokesperson, Ángel L. Hernández.
Professor's opinionTemporary teachers from Murcia
UP FOR DEBATE
The initiatives put forward at the forum, both by experts and the Administration, revolve around the initial training of teachers, the accompanying training prior to moving into the classroom and the possible evaluation to access the position. In other words, the proposal is to change the competitive examination system for accessing teaching.
Among the issues that generate the most debate is access to the teaching career, since the experts who attended the forum agreed in pointing out that the opposition system is "outdated and memorized" , which prioritizes pure and hard knowledge over innovation and creativity. For this reason, the Minister of Education, Isabel Celaá, aims during her mandate to reach an agreement on the teaching career. To do so, Celaá has stressed that it is necessary to make a "joint reflection and a serious diagnosis" , according to statements reported this week by various national media.
The Minister also stated that "the best" should be chosen as teachers, not those who do so "due to the vicissitudes of life", which requires redefining everything from access to the profession to the evaluation of their work. This point has also raised hundreds of opinions on social networks, since Education proposes an evaluation of a "voluntary" nature and that it involves incentives, not exclusively economic, but which could be related to the possibility of accessing training courses abroad or international exchanges.
As highlighted in the tweet above, Manu Velasco, teacher and list of mobile numbers author of the successful blog Ayuda para Maestros , in the #YoSoyProfe forum, important issues such as reducing classroom ratios and increasing the number of support teachers, among others, have remained unresolved. As he pointed out in an interview on this blog with Óscar Casado , best early childhood education teacher in 2017, teachers have serious difficulties in meeting the needs of students in the classroom when they work with 25 children. On the other hand, entities such as AMEI-WAECE , the World Association of Early Childhood Educators, are calling for greater attention and measures for the Early Childhood Education cycle.
Association of Early Childhood Educators
There is debate. And these are just a few examples! But there is also humour, and as proof of this we have the presence of Maestra de Pueblo on social media, who always makes us laugh with her wit.