School year not to go beyond June

With the Easter holidays now over but with schools still closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, the authorities insist that this academic year will not go beyond June into July in order to recover lost classroom time.

That was the result of an agreement reached on Wednesday between Spain’s authorities and the governments of its regions, including Catalonia, as the third term of the school year began on Tuesday with children still confined to home due to the health crisis.

Despite the determination to finish the 2020 school year in June, the Spanish government is considering asking regional education departments to organize revision activities and provide support for schoolchildren over the summer.

With the state of alarm in Spain extended to the end of April and possibly into May, there is little sign that schools will be able to open any time soon, which means that teachers will have to finish the academic year online.

This week, the Catalan education department will begin distributing 22,000 internet and computer data packs to ensure that children in 52,000 families with difficulties will be able to take advantage of the online classes.

School year must resume, says minister

Speaking this week, Catalan education minister Josep Bargalló stressed the "need" to resume the school year and said the aim of the third term must be to keep schools in contact with all students and to ensure that they do not lose studying or reading habits.

Bargalló also ruled out a general pass for the whole school year for students, although the minister stressed that no one would be failed on the basis of the final term. The results for the first and second terms would be taken into consideration, said Bargalló, with any school work pending to be recovered in the next school year.

Along with schools, universities were also closed on March 13, with this year's university entrance exams postponed from June 11 to 13 until July 7 to 9. Yet on Thursday, business and knowledge minister Àngels Chacón hinted that the entrance exams could be held in September should an extension of the state of alarm make the July dates impossible.

Meanwhile, the Catalan government and universities have agreed on a series of proposals for how to go about remotely testing university students in the final exams. The proposals include such things as written tests delivered in PDF documents and oral exams held via video conferencing.