Reaching Baccalaureate (upper secondary education) is no mean feat by a long shot. Students take many subjects to show in an assertive and intelligent way that they have the specific abilities that invariably validate their long track record as non-university students. Their longitudinal path has sensitively touched all the stages of emotional, social and cognitive learning in constant evolution and human development.
We will take a look back: during their initial years, children discover with curiosity an imaginary world in pre-school education; they then discover surprising experiences and knowledge and are keen to learn in primary education; and subsequently they build much more complex representations and meanings to understand the existential reality surrounding teenagers in secondary education. Everything that students have picked up from their school years retrospectively shows the virtues they have forged until reaching the last educational stage thanks to their dedication, perseverance and motivation to ensure their professional future.
How do the Best Schools in Spain achieve success based on an excellent and high-quality Baccalaureate?
Excellence in Baccalaureate at the Best Schools in Spain has a lot to do with the quality of the professionals and how they accompany students during their last non-university stage. The professionals include very dedicated teachers of subjects, tutors and experts from the guidance department and specific university guidance programmes, who provide the young students with personal attention and dedication.
Accompanying students provides regular communication with them, without losing sight of their interests, helping them when necessary so that they become aware of their capabilities and their cognitive, motor and social skills to deal with their imminent professional training and their objective relationship with the academic requirements of the various university offerings.
In the Baccalaureate stage, our schools present the subjects and work on them, focusing significantly on student performance and their chances of success. The teachers’ mission changes drastically: from passing on information and knowledge, to facilitating learning and accompanying students. This substantially changes students’ autonomy: from being mere spectators to becoming committed and responsible players able to lead themselves.
What educational circumstances foster such changes?
- Selecting and acquiring abilities among students with high cognitive, procedural and attitudinal skills are essential for accessing the university market, making sure that the relationship between Baccalaureate, university and career becomes a significant reality.
- The objectives are essentially conceived by assertively handling thinking skills and developing specific skills, remembering that they all require prior knowledge.
- The learning structure is scalable and flexible. The educational settings are diverse and created based on demand. Classrooms stop being the only settings for learning.
- In-person classes are flexible. They adapt to student needs, focusing on customised attention and monitoring small work groups: monographs, projects, fieldwork and research. The time that students spend learning through their personal work is considered time spent in person in class.
- Regarding the curriculum, the subjects’ main contents are selected and the specific learning abilities and skills are boosted much more.
- Baccalaureate students are able to self-assess their own learning process. Through that self-assessment or co-assessment with the help of their teachers, students become aware of their own capabilities and how they can be self-managed depending on the various learning situations.
The schools which belong to the BSS group provide top-level Baccalaureate in Spain and meet the needs of the 21st century society where teachers, career guidance counsellors and the other professionals at those schools monitor students’ performance and decision-making.
