Teachers forced to take and pass public sector exams to keep their jobs

TEACHERS with excellent grades and limited or no experience are currently at the bottom of the list for getting jobs, but an about-turn in the system means thousands who got work based upon practical teaching will now have to face tough written exams in order to keep their positions.

Until now, experience in supply teaching counted above everything else and applicants in this situation were chosen first.

Those who had previously taught in a private school, or a grant-maintained establishment – known as a colegio concertado, a 'halfway house' between a private and public school – and wished to switch to work in a State centre would also be among those who got first pick for teaching posts.

In both cases, if this practical work had been obtained without their having taken and passed the necessary public sector exams, known as oposiciones, the candidate would still be at the top of the list.

Candidates with no experience but who had passed all the public sector exams were at the bottom of the heap and the last to get a job, even if they had excellent grades of 80 per cent or above.

About 1,100 in the average Spanish province is affected by this structure.

And being at the bottom of the list, getting any work experience to climb higher up it has been nearly impossible because they will be overlooked when supply teacher positions come up.

Now, though, the hierarchy is set to be reversed with exam completion and corresponding grades being considered the most important factor for getting work.

Worst of all is that those teachers who already have a job now have to take and pass the oposiciones exams and will be fired if they do not.

They only have two attempts to pass these, and if they fail both, they will lose their jobs.

This is likely to mean good quality and experienced teachers lose their jobs in favour of others who have never been in front of a class in real life.

After studying their chosen subject at university and a teacher-training course, those who want to get a job at the chalkface have to pass three sets of public sector exams, or oposiciones, which have an extremely stringent and unforgiving marking criteria.

Most take several attempts to get through these, and are then passed onto a database, or bolsa de trabajo, where they will be called in for supply teaching work periodically.

This can mean a phone call ordering them to drop everything and head to the other side of the country for a week's worth of work, giving up any current job they may have.

Refusal to take up the offer normally means being deleted from the database.

For every full-time, permanent teaching job in the public sector, there are normally a minimum of 15 candidates, which translates to about 3,000 applicants for every 200 positions.