Students who exchanged school failure for success: "I went from doing nothing to wishing for the next day to come to class"

Juan Carlos de los Santos repeated the second year of secondary school, and by the middle of the third year, when he only went to high school sporadically, he seemed to have all the chances of school failure. "I was broke, basically, because I didn't do anything with my life. And entering Basic Vocational Training gave me a mental turn. I went from being unmotivated and not wanting to study, to being looking forward to the next day to go to class and continue learning." De los Santos, 21, a resident of Los Palacios and Villafranca (Seville), had always liked to assemble and disassemble apparatus. But thanks to the basic degree in electricity at a public high school and the teachers he found there, he discovered, he says, a passion. He completed a two-year course of education that earned him a high school diploma. He enrolled in a middle grade from the same family, which he finished with distinction. And then in a higher degree, which he is finishing and combines with the work in his own small company, repairing mobile phones, which he opened in the summer and has allowed him to become independent with his girlfriend, while he prepares to take the Selectivity in June for those who come from FP to study the career of Robotics Engineering.

De los Santos is one of the nearly 23,000 students who each year finish Basic Vocational Training, an educational itinerary that combines an academic and a professional part, designed for those who seem doomed to stop studying without even obtaining the ESO certificate. It is usually accessed at the age of 15. And a good number drop out: according to data published last week by the Ministry of Education, only 50.4% manage to graduate, four years after enrollment. A percentage 1.3 points better than a year earlier, which is still far from that of the intermediate degree of vocational training (64.3%) and the higher (75.3%). For many, however, like De los Santos and the other three young people interviewed in this report, it helps them re-engage and progress successfully in their studies. Seven out of every 10 students in the basic grade (a total of 78,000) are boys. Most come from working-class homes (De los Santos' father is a metal carpenter, and his mother is a housewife and seamstress). And some of them have lived on the edge of social exclusion, with very complicated family and personal situations.

Christian Olfos returned to school with a basic vocational training. In the picture, in Logroño, where his company, where he works as a welder, has had an assignment these days. Fernando Domingo-Aldama

Juanjo Alcalá has been teaching in public education for 34 years, almost always in secondary schools in Albacete, and 10 of them in Basic Vocational Training. "From my experience, it's a student body that usually arrives with very low self-esteem, and that's the first thing to work on. They come from failing in secondary school because, for one reason or another, they have not been able to adapt to the system or the system to them. In general, they have gone through bad educational experiences, they may have had repeated expulsions from class or truancy. Normally, they have been stigmatized as bad students. And they need other stimuli, other methodologies, more practical and interactive content. In my case, they are the students with whom I have had the most satisfaction working." Even more than at other levels, with them he had to learn to be a bit "psychologist and pedagogue, to sometimes leave content in the background and act in other fields". "I acquired tools that my academic training had not given me, and that have helped me to teach at other educational levels."

One of her students was Alba Calderón, 21, who is now finishing her degree in administration and finance. The daughter of a soldier and a domestic worker, before arriving in Albacete at the age of 10, she had already lived in four provinces. In the second year of secondary school, he failed nine subjects, repeated, and became convinced that he would not be able to finish high school. "At that time I didn't like to study. I saw everything as complicated. He told me, 'I'm not going to be able to.' And when I started basic vocational training, I met some teachers who helped you, motivated you, and as there were fewer of them in class, they could be more aware of you," she says. There are, on average, 12.1 students in the basic grade groups (compared to 24.9 in ESO), according to data from the Ministry of Education. There are large differences by region, ranging from 8.2 in Extremadura to 15.3 in Madrid. Calderón then graduated, with honors, in an intermediate vocational training program at the Leonardo da Vinci Institute in Albacete, and in March he will begin his internships at the higher level.

The perspective of basic vocational training makes us rethink what educational success is, says Roberto García, coordinator of the Peñascal Cooperative, a non-profit organisation that emerged in the 500s in the Basque Country in which more than 23 students study the stage. "Many say it's going to university, but first of all it means that a person achieves labor and life inclusion." Christian Olfos, 15 years old, raised in Otxarkoaga, one of the lowest-income neighbourhoods in Bilbao, passed through the cooperative's classrooms. His parents, a bricklayer and street sweeper, separated when he was five years old, and as a child he suffered the violence that some of his mother's partners exercised against her. "I saw a lot of things at home that weren't ... I was in a juvenile center, I ran away, at the age of <> I came to live on the street, and I am very grateful for the help of the teachers and family members who helped me get out of the pit," she says. Olfos did a Basic Vocational Training and then an intermediate degree in Welding. While he was studying, he came fifth in a competition in his specialty organized by Talgo and the CSIC among hundreds of students from different parts of Spain, and shortly afterwards he was hired. "Now I have an indefinite contract, a house, a partner. I live happily," he says.

Learning in a different way

One of the pending objectives, says Clara Sanz, general secretary of FP, is that basic degrees are no longer considered second-class studies and are seen as a way "for students who learn in a different way". "I," says Olfos, who repeated in primary school and secondary school, "felt uncomfortable being in a chair for so many hours. I could tell it was made for more practical things." And Ilyas Laktaoui, 21, who came to Spain with his parents from Morocco when he was two, and repeated secondary school before switching to basic grade in Albacete, adds: "In secondary school I had subjects that can be important, but that were different to me, such as Biology or History. On the other hand, when I entered the Computer Science Vocational Training I liked it right away". Laktaoui (father, mechanic; mother, housewife) then did an intermediate degree, and is now finishing the six-month period of a higher degree internship in a multinational, where he is almost certain that he will stay working.

Rodrigo Plaza, who was for years federally responsible for vocational training in Comisiones Obreras, believes that reducing to reasonable levels the high dropout rate in the basic degree involves further lowering the ratios (there are centers where classrooms have 25 students), assigning teachers to their classes "very specialized in this type of student", and increasing and diversifying the public offer. in which there are now enormous territorial contrasts. With Cantabria, where basic education can be studied in most secondary schools, at one extreme, and Catalonia, where there are few places, at the other. "In L'Hospitalet, for example, the second most populous city in Catalonia, there are only two basic vocational training courses, and they are also very gender-biased. One, in the high school where I teach, in Metal, where practically only boys go, and another, in another high school, hairdressing, where practically only girls go."

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