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Elements for a Diagnosis of the Spanish Educational System 2 - Academic performance (continued) ![]() ![]() ![]() |
ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE IN GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORYEvaluation of the areas of Geography and History, like in the cases of Spelling and Written Composition, was restricted to the MEC Territory, that is to say, the ten Autonomous Regions undergoing full devolvement in educational matters. In the area of Geography, the knowledge of Physical Geography and Human Geography was appraised. The test includes items from Physical Geography related to the weather, topography, surface waters, vegetable formations and the physical regions. In to Human Geography, it appraised matters of human and environmental impact, cultural change, the characteristics and distribution of the urban and rural population, the economic factors, political organisation and the cultural regions. Along with these contents, an attempt was made at estimating the student’s capacity to know, understand and locate contents, and to applied diverse techniques and tools to these. The blocks of History concern the time period covered by their title and include Prehistory, Ancient History, Medieval History, Modern History and Contemporary History. These also consider the capacities of knowing, understanding and explaining, along with application of different techniques and skills. Table 10 shows the average percentage of correct answers in the area of Geography and History and relevant subareas for students aged 14 and 16. |
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The sample aged 14 and that aged 16 obtained results showing the students were able to answer 46% of the answers correctly in the tests. One must remember that the test for age 16 is at a higher level than the one for age 14. In both cases, the results in the area of Geography are also better than those in History, as the students aged 14 answered 51% of the answers in Geography correctly, and those aged 16 53%, while in History the average percentages of correct answers were 42% and 41% respectively. Within the field of History, although the results were relatively balanced, Ancient History and Contemporary History seem to have the lowest results, and Medieval and Modern History better. in Geography the results are fairly similar, perhaps with a slight tendency for the results in Human Geography to be slightly better. The resulting average (MEC Territory) after the tests administered to 14 year old students was 228.26 points, lying between the anchorage points of 200 and 250. This means that the average 14 year old student is able to perform the tasks linked to level 200 and has not yet reached the skills at point 250. As to students aged 16, the resulting average was 269.59, that is to say, somewhat more than 41 points above that for 14 years old, thus lying between 250 and 300. Table 11 shows the skills and knowledge in the area of Geography and History for each one of the performance levels, as well as the percentages of students who pass each level. |
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