Why do students no longer repeat a year?
In Catalonia, repeating a year is only applied in studied and exceptional cases and when it has been verified that it will be the most beneficial option for the student
BarcelonaThe school year ends and the closest horizon for students is the summer holidays, but a little further ahead, as the calendar progresses, there is the start of a new school year in September and meeting up with friends again. Taking a step forward and, in some cases, changing stages. But there are a few students for whom these holidays will only be the prelude to Groundhog Day, as they finish the school year knowing that the next one they will return to the same classroom, the same subjects, the same teachers, but with different classmates. While, years ago, it was a reality that was rarely questioned, now many variables are considered before making a student repeat a year. In fact, in Catalonia, it is only applied in studied and exceptional cases and when it has been proven to be the most beneficial option for the student.
“If you focus on the results and the school's objective is to achieve the highest possible results, repeating, whether or not it is considered an aggressive solution, is an option. If, on the other hand, you value and focus on the processes, proposing that a student repeat requires studying it very well and taking many other factors into account before deciding,” points out Mar Hurtado, a teacher and president of the Rosa Sensat Teachers' Association. The teacher points out that if a child's academic progress is valued by their upward advancement, even if they are not at the same level as the whole group, making them repeat makes no sense. “Furthermore, if we advocate for individualized attention, despite the lack of resources that we all know about, it makes no sense to think only about results because we will end up cutting all students to the same pattern”.
In fact, the regulations indicate that if there is no singular situation to the contrary, students must be promoted to the next grade. “There may be students who repeat with three suspended subjects and others who pass with four, for example,” points out David Vilella, head of secondary studies at Institut Escola Sant Felip Neri in Barcelona. He explains that if the school board does not see clearly that repeating will be of any use, they often promote the student and continue working with the necessary adaptations. “In any case, their personal situation, the context, their special educational needs, their emotional well-being, and their integration into the group are taken into account, both in the current group and in the possible group below. And all this is what somewhat shapes this decision, which must always be well justified”.
Damages and losses
According to Mònica Nadal, research director at the Equitat.org Foundation, repeating a school year is a measure that by itself does not serve to improve learning or encourage young people to continue studying. “It is an intuitively very good measure, but if you don't change the learning method, if you don't give them support and you don't pay attention to and understand why they haven't achieved the competencies, what happens to the student is even worse”. As Nadal states, repeating can cause damage to the student's self-esteem and their self-perception: that they are not good enough to study, that they are bad. And then there is the emotional effect: they become detached from their class group. They become the one who couldn't keep up, and that is also painful.
“The expectations that teachers have about boys and girls who repeat also tend to be low. They receive a student who has difficulties and if they have to go through the same process without understanding and support where they have had it or where they have gotten stuck, the most likely thing is that they will not get through it much this second time either,” adds Nadal, who underlines the fact that international evidence indicates that when a student repeats, the probability of them dropping out of studies soon is much higher. “All the research tells us that it is a sentence to premature school leaving. Therefore, it should be the last of the solutions, when others have already been tried.”
“All this is not about overprotecting, let's not be mistaken. Sometimes, when I talk about this topic, there is an immediate response that children are contemplated too much, but this is not about limits, it is about understanding the child, their relationship with others and looking at them in a global way as a person who learns and relates,” emphasizes Hurtado.
Necessary support
“Repeating a year can only be successful if it is accompanied by personalized intervention and support measures. Repeating is not a magic solution, it is not a miracle,” emphasizes Núria Pedrós, doctor in pedagogy. While she agrees on all the factors pointed out by other experts, she also brings up another fact that leads to a student having to repeat a year: perhaps the support has not been adequate. She believes that the school should also conduct a self-examination to see why a student is repeating. “It must also be said that this is a dog chasing its tail: if we have twenty-five children in class and five need special support that they do not receive, do we teachers have to dedicate ourselves to the remaining twenty or to the five who need to learn other things?”. In this regard, Pedrós acknowledges that teachers have a “messianic attitude” and a tendency to dedicate themselves more to those who have more difficulties. “But we must always accompany the diversity we have in the classroom, and if we don't have psychopedagogues, social workers, speech therapists, etc., it's all much more complicated”.
Providing individualized accompaniment and follow-up is synonymous with having the resources to do so. “A good system is needed in primary education for early detection of learning difficulties or disorders, as well as the capacity to monitor how competencies are acquired, to be able to count on other support professionals and on co-teaching models,” points out Mònica Nadal. The research director at the Equitat.org Foundation also states that there is evidence that repetition is an extremely expensive measure. “If instead of spending so much money making a student repeat an entire course, we invested it in measures to develop attention to diversity or to provide additional educational support, the results would be much higher.”David Vilella, a secondary school teacher, also calls for more possibilities to support and accompany these boys and girls because sometimes their situations go beyond the educational sphere. “In some cases, they are young people who are lost in life, who come home and are alone, have dinner alone, go to sleep alone, wake up alone... In the end, whether they pass or fail often ends up being a consequence of their lives, their situation, or that of their family, which cannot afford extra English or music classes, and that is a reality. I believe that the composition of this entire socio-cultural, economic, and well-being environment of the boys and girls is key,” he concludes.
In any case, Pedrós points out that if a student has to repeat, it is better to do so in primary school than in secondary school. “The social group is not as strong, they do not have consolidated ties and because, as far as brain development is concerned, to acquire and consolidate basic knowledge it is more beneficial”. Nadal agrees with Pedrós, and points out that often students are made to repeat when it is already too late and they carry the deficiencies they have from previous courses. “Perhaps they got lost at some point in mathematics and when they reach the third year of ESO they have certain dysfunctions. Or perhaps they had a reading comprehension problem and if they have not consolidated reading skills well, which is a foundational thing, they cannot learn”. If the student has to repeat secondary school in an obvious way and when the class group is very consolidated, Hurtado recalls that it is often recommended to change them to a different center to, in a way, make them start from scratch. “Otherwise, they can come to feel powerless and their identity can be weakened, in addition to feeling isolated and invisible”.
For their part, Vilella also speaks of positive retention and, in the case of their center, of students who, after repeating a course, have been able to finish secondary school successfully or with a good average grade. “There are cases where that retention has given them the opportunity and the time, sometimes, to gain in maturity and responsibility. Often they need time to know exactly what they want to do or to find motivation to study, and this retention causes them to have a change in dynamics the following year,” he concludes.
