About 450 public and charter schools (representing nearly 20% of the total) have signed up to participate in testing to identify learning disabilities in their students. The tests are voluntary – the centers decide whether to pass them – when it was announced in March that they would be mandatory, which has generated conflicting opinions in different sectors. This is a type of screening that students in the 1st and 3rd grades will undergo in January with the aim of highlighting language problems or dyslexia. “We need to identify needs from an educational point of view and see what interventions can be made in the classroom to help them and, finally, improve educational results”, summarizes Susana Tarapiella, general director of Inclusive Education.
It is widely believed that the increase in diversity in classes and in students with needs – including some learning disorders, behavior or disabilities – is hindering student achievement, because teachers cannot carry out lessons with the calm of a few decades ago and are unable to address the specificities of each student. In recent years, detection mechanisms have improved a lot and brought many disorders to the surface, but now the Department of Education wants to go a step further by promoting early diagnosis to address problems as early as possible.
This is how the so-called APPA tests (Prevention Actions to Promote Learning) were born, which teachers will submit to 1st grade students in January to identify linguistic problems and in 3rd grade, focused on dyslexia. Furthermore, a guide prepared by the College of Speech Therapists was sent to the centers with the warning signs that teachers from nursery school to 2nd grade should take into account. “At Infantil3 we find ourselves increasingly using pacifiers, bottles and crushed baby food, which means that the oral area is not as developed, to which we add the problem of screens and that children are not stimulated on a linguistic level,” explains Tarapiella.
The teachers will be responsible for collecting the test results and will send them to the Department via an application, receiving the declaration with the results in February. «The idea is that everything possible is done in the classroom, but the most serious cases will be referred to healthcare, because changes are being prepared in primary care to incorporate services such as speech therapists and psychologists», anticipates Tarapiella.
Education wants to broaden its scope to other disorders such as dyscalculia or intellectual disability and next year other tests will be introduced in the 5th class of primary school and in the 1st class of ESO, even if it still remains to be defined what it wants to detect. At the same time, the director general assures that the University of Girona has been commissioned to update the guide for the identification of high abilities – “the documentation is from 2013”, he underlines. Tarapiella also specifies that the experience of these courses will be evaluated to decide whether they will become mandatory next year.
In March the Department announced that all testing would begin this year and that it would be mandatory. But the managements, through the central board, asked that they be voluntary. In the end, around 450 centers registered, a figure that the Education assesses positively, since it was expected that there would be fewer, around 350. “You cannot make a new measure universal without first having tested it. You have to evaluate and correct the things that need to be improved before making them mandatory”, defends Arturo Ramírez, member of the board of directors, who believes the existence of these tests is necessary. “In 30 years I have never seen a situation as worrying, quantitatively and qualitatively, as the current one. Early diagnosis should give us clues to assist students earlier, so that the problems do not become chronic and therefore it is more difficult to correct the situation”, adds the director.
From the concerted party they also see it as a good idea for them to be volunteers, for those centers where there is not much awareness on the part of the teachers. “The tests are for statistics or to help in the classroom, what we need are more resources,” says Eva Aguiló, from the Verge de la Salut school in Sant Feliu de Llobregat, who also highlights the increase in needs. “In some schools the number of students with disorders has doubled, which can reach 10 or 20% of the total class,” he adds.
Other voices ask that the tests be based on censuses, so as not to create inequalities among students. Mireia Sala, a member of the College of Speech Therapists who participated in the preparation of the guide sent to schools, believes that if the tests are voluntary “there will be under-detection” and also believes that they should be passed earlier. “In kindergarten you can already see if there is a problem and in the 1st grade it is already too late, because that’s when you need to intervene; and in the 3rd grade the most important phase to be able to intervene has already passed”, he complains.
77% increase.
The perception they have in classrooms is corroborated by statistics: last year there were 42,266 students aged 3 to 16 (4% of the total enrolled) with some disorder or disability, those classified as NESE A, in mainstream schools, which represents a 77% increase compared to the 23,857 enrolled in the 2017-18 academic year, according to data from the Department of Education. The various experts consulted justify this increase with the improvement of the detection processes, while adding other elements.
Rosa Bosch, psychologist in the mental health area of Althaia hospital, expects this percentage to increase to 10 and 20%, and corresponds to the level of prevalence of these disorders. Bosch explains that today other elements are taken into account in the diagnosis and defends research into the causes, including environmental factors such as pollution, which a recent study by Vall d’Hebron and Sant Joan de Déu has associated with behavioral problems in minors. “Other aspects should also be studied, such as the age of the parents, nutrition, screens, social conditions…”, adds Bosch. Mireia Sala also aims for new methodologies. “Literacy requires intensity, perseverance and systematic practice. Every day you have to read and do writing exercises. But in recent years the intensity has lowered.”
Agreement with Sant Joan de Déu
The Department of Education focuses on so-called learning disabilities, but the public schools of Sant Cugat del Vallès have entered into an agreement from 2023 with the Sant Joan de Déu Hospital to carry out a screening aimed at identifying neurodevelopmental disorders (autism, ADHD…), a project financed by the Municipality. This is a voluntary test for 2nd grade students and, if any indication is found, a more in-depth study is carried out, which the centers consider “a luxury”, taking into account the cost and the waiting list for these tests. “The objective is to avoid the abandonment of these students because it was not discovered before that they have a problem and no measures have been put in place to help them,” underlines Ana Prieto, director of the La Floresta school.
