Controversy over Mario fever: Has the core competencies been less demanding?

Barcelona"This is a 4th year ESO exercise: are you telling me that ESO students can't count?" Messages like these have spread across social media this weekend, accompanied by a math problem. Mario, a 7-year-old boy, has a fever, and his parents are gradually reducing his temperature throughout the day.

The exercise is part of one of the five activities that All 4th year ESO students in Catalan secondary schools had to answer the questions last week. In a new edition of the basic skills tests, the Catalan government's main gauge for analyzing students' academic level. Just two days after 6th grade primary and 4th year secondary school students took the tests, the Higher Assessment Council—the body that organizes the tests each year in Catalonia—has published all the exercises for this year's tests, as well as the corrections.

In the case of the mathematics tests for the last year of secondary school, the first exercise that appears is Mario's, the activity that has caused controversy online because to answer the first question, all you have to do is count how many dots appear on a graph.

Despite the fuss surrounding the difficulty of this exercise, it should be noted that this is only a portion of the five activities—some with a dozen exercises each—that comprise the tests. "I don't consider this year's tests to be easier or more difficult than those of other years," notes Raül Fernández, a mathematics teacher at the Institut Vidreres. The teacher, who is also president of the Association of Mathematics Teachers of the Girona Region (Ademgi), warns that the difficulty varies depending on each activity and that this first exercise may be merely "an initial question to see if the student has understood the problem, and that it scores less than other sections, as is the case with the PISA tests, than some directly." Lluís Mora, a mathematics teacher trainer and recently retired secondary school teacher, agrees: "This criticism of them being too easy is quite repetitive, but if you look at the items asked, they are similar every year."

For Fernández, this easier first question is also key when it comes to determining whether the student knows what they're answering in the following activities—all of which are multiple-choice tests—or is simply "taking their luck": "If you didn't understand that this is a temperature check in the first one, no matter how well they answer the others, we should be able to do it."

As the test progresses, the difficulty of the exercises also increases. "There are enumeration and calculation exercises; space, shape, and measurement; algebra and statistics," explains Mora. However, the president of Ademgi insists that it must be taken into account that these tests evaluate what has been done up to the third year of compulsory secondary education, not the fourth. "There's no trigonometry, no linear systems... because they ask questions from the third year, not the fourth. What is asked is appropriate and all the course content is included," he clarifies.

Are they useful for comparing generations?

Beyond the math tests in 4th year of ESO this year –which You can consult the complete version here, along with the corrections published by the Higher Council for Evaluation–, another doubt about the table is whether comparing the level between generations with different exercises can give a true picture of how the system is evolving.

The mathematics teacher trainer explains that since the difficulty of the tests is similar every year, a priori they should serve to make a comparison with guarantees. "The theoretical framework from which it starts is always the same, therefore, I believe they are perfectly comparable. The tests can be easier or more difficult, but if they are always of the same style they can work," he assures.

However, Mora also points out that, apart from carrying out a general analysis, the main function of these tests is for each individual center to be aware of which points they need to reinforce. "The purpose of the assessment is to take a snapshot of what the school is doing. They take what the tests say and say: 'This school's numeracy and arithmetic skills are weak, so what they need to do is introduce elements of work from the first year of secondary school to try to cover these shortcomings shown by the 4th year secondary school test.'" However, despite considering the tests useful, the math teacher is clear: "With all this, I don't mean to say that the level can't be improved. It is, and a lot, but the results were already frankly worrying 10 years ago."