The Basque Government has just presented in Parliament the document 'Bases for the Agreement on Education'. From these bases, he wants to approve the new Education Act in this legislature.

After reading the document, the first blow is immediate: The Basque Government has considered in Spanish the basis of education for the future. In 2018, in the Department of Education, they have worked in Spanish and later – by the way – they have published the translation also in Basque.

The second blow is given by the language section: It's so weak! Imagine: The Basque Government tells us that in 2016-17 95% of 16-year-old students have studied in models D and B in the CAV. He also points out that in 20 years 90% of young people will be bilingual, although most of them will adapt to the Spanish language, as he explained. So where is the need to abandon models D and B? What is more, when the Government tells us that the results show that today “languages are not learned well”. And it proposes a series of measures to overcome this problem:

– Change the teaching methodology to be the axis of the communicative approach.
“Pay enough attention to the oral.” – That all
subjects have the objective of developing communicative competence.
– Support teachers who need it to “reach level C1+ and especially excellent oral dexterity”. – Provide
the Administration with resources for the effectiveness of language plans.
– Joint planning of languages and teamwork of teachers of all languages.
– Define the “profile of new teachers joining the educational system”.

The question arises by itself: Why are not all these measures taken before we break down what has happened so far? It will be easier, instead of directly resorting to the elimination of models, to apply these measures of improvement immediately in models D and B that account for 95% of the total of students, as 3L will not, in most cases, be better than model B: to change the methodologies to teach Basque and English, to give the importance that the oral needs, to improve the Basque level of the teaching profession (and to perform the compulsory examination).

If we do it differently, starting from a foundation that's only 3L paper, we have a real risk: in the next few decades, the education system is going to train mostly the ears instead of the drownings.