During the second week of March 2020, schools in several of Spain’s autonomous regionsFootnote 1 began to suspend their in-person (face-to-face) activities partially or completely in response to the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. This was one of the first measures taken at a local level to contain the transmission of the disease that had begun to surge throughout the country. On Saturday of that same week, 14 March, the national government declared a nation-wide state of emergency. Among other measures, in-person educational activities were suspended in all schools and at all levels (Real Decreto 463/ 2020). Subsequently, on Monday, 16 March, all schools and educational institutions remained closed and in-person education and administrative affairs were replaced by remote activities.

As a result of these circumstances, school life was abruptly and unexpectedly altered. While the days prior to the school closure provided some inkling that such a measure could be taken, there was very little time to prepare or carry out a careful adaptation. As a result, educational programming that had been designed by schools and teachers for the academic year were left in limbo. With the second trimester of the 2019–2020 school year ending, educators had numerous questions about resuming teaching activities after the Spring holidays and through the end of the school year.

The Royal Decree establishing a state of emergency and general confinement of the Spanish population also determined that educational activities should be continued remotely and online using the available means. Consequently, in-person education was substituted, virtually overnight, by remote teaching that resorted as best it could to available technological and didactic tools according to contingency plans prepared by the regions and the situation of schools.

Education Reform Initiatives Preceding the Pandemic

In Spain, the pandemic’s exceptional circumstances coincided with a process of transformation that had begun shortly after the change of government in June 2018. The new government was determined to carry out a significant reform of the Spanish educational system and lost no time in getting to work. Its proposed reform focused primarily on the pre-university level, where the need was most urgent. Although certain measures affected the university as well, we will limit our discussion here to the earlier educational stages, elementary and secondary schooling, where the impact of the reform was more significant.

In the immediate years before 2018, a vivid educational debate arose in Spain, namely after the approval of a conservative education law changing many of the traditional features of the Spanish education system (LOMCE, 2013). The new government was committed to changing that law and consequently a process in that direction was started in September 2018. As has occurred in other countries, the social, technological, cultural, and economic changes of recent decades have incited lively, even raucous debate in Spain about the need to introduce educational changes that will respond to new demands. Some of the controversies grab the attention of the media, at which point education, in addition to being discussed by pedagogues and teachers, becomes a subject of debate in political, economic and media circles. The publication of the OECD’s annual Education at a Glance report and, to an even greater degree, the PISA results, tend to spark a flurry of analyses, opinions, proposals, and reactions. While the diagnosis of the educational reforms that are needed is not always objective and balanced, there is something of a consensus about certain points, even if the solutions proposed for these issues vary considerably. The mere fact of a broad consensus regarding the importance of facing the new challenges should be seen positively and as something that, regardless of the discrepancy among the proposed solutions, constitutes a common starting point for the pursuit of often hard-won agreements.

  • At 13.9% in 2022, Spain has the highest school dropout rate in the European Union.Dropout rates have decreased over the last two decades; however, they must decrease at a more rapid pace if Spain wishes to improve the general formative level of its population.

  • There is a clear need to improve the configuration of secondary education and to promote the development of vocational education and training by increasing the rate of continuing studies after compulsory schooling. While the percentage of students enrolling in higher education is above the European average, the low rate of upper secondary education graduates continues to be a problem. This deficit can be seen most clearly in the realm of vocational education and training (VET), where the rates in Spain are approximately half of the rest of Europe (Ministerio de Educación y Formación Profesional, 2021).

Rates of grade retention, or requiring students to repeat a course, in Spain practically triple the average of other OECD countries. Despite the many voices that denounce the uselessness of grade retention as a pedagogical tool, Spanish pedagogical culture continues to consider it a solution, especially in the lower stages of secondary education (Save the Children, 2022; Tiana, 2008). The good news is that the awareness of how important it is to reduce this rate of grade retention seems to have increased and spread throughout Spanish society and the educational system in general.

  • This array of problems is also related to two traditional features of our educational system. The first of these is the overly broad curricula, whose virtually encyclopedic nature makes in-depth study or manageable amounts of schoolwork impossible, as well as limiting students’ and teachers’ autonomy. The second problem has to do with limited transfer pathways among different modalities of studies, such as general and technical education – especially in secondary education – which can stymie more open, flexible study trajectories.

  • Naturally there are socioeconomic connotations to these issues, as they do not affect different social groups equally; students from lower socio-economic status, together with vulnerable groups and immigrants, are disproportionately affected. While Spain has traditionally had a reasonable rate of educational equality in student learning outcomes, as measured by PISA (OECD, 2018), in the last decade inequality has increased, and we find increasing instances of school segregation, particularly in certain regions such as Madrid (Murillo & Martínez-Garrido, 2018).

  • Finally, we should mention the importance of fostering educational inclusion, following various recommendations by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of People with Disabilities. While the integration into regular public schools of students with special educational needs begun in the 1980s has undoubtedly made important strides, with 85% of students with disabilities integrated in regular schools, there is still considerable work to be done to make educational inclusion effective. And we must not forget to pay attention to students with severe disabilities who continue to be included in special education schools.

Faced with this scenario, the new government constituted in 2018 undertook the transformation of certain aspects of the pre-university stages of education. A draft legislative bill was prepared, partially modifying the existing law. The project was approved by the ministerial cabinet on February 15th, 2019, and sent to the parliament for approval Among the outstanding proposals included in this law were various changes that, in addition to giving an idea of the roadmap to be followed, would have a notable impact on decisions adopted during the pandemic.

  • The bill adopted a childhood rights orientation in accordance with the guidelines laid down by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006). It included an acknowledgement of the best interest of the child, of the right to education, of the state’s obligation to ensure that the rights of the child are protected, and the adoption of several measures aimed at encouraging inclusive education and educational equity.

  • The bill adopted a gender equality orientation through coeducation and equality between males and females at all education levels, the prevention of gender-based violence, and respect for affective-sexual diversity. These elements were incorporated into the curricula and into measures relating to school life.

  • The bill established an objective continuous improvement plan through curricular reform and more personalized teaching. The reform was based on a model of competency development through the early detection of learning problems, coupled with their prevention and recovery. Greater personalization and attention to diversity were given more emphasis as general educational principles.

  • The bill acknowledged the importance of applying the Agenda 2030, which implied that education for sustainable development, global citizenship, peace, and human rights, and intercultural education would be incorporated into the new curricula.

  • Emphasis was given to bolstering digital transformation in education, including the development of digital competencies among teachers and students at all stages through specific contents as well as from a transversal perspective.

  • Measures were implemented to decrease the phenomena of grade repetition and dropout. This included more flexible school itineraries allowing for greater possibilities of attending to all students and offering them the chance to continue their education after compulsory schooling.

  • Measures were established for the purpose of reinforcing school organization, with an emphasis on cooperation and group work among teachers as well as on encouraging a more flexible, participatory approach.

When general elections were set for April 28th of the same year, the parliamentary process for approving the law was suspended. The educational debate, however, continued. After further elections on November 20th, 2019, the coalition government that was formed in January of 2020 took up the legislative project from the previous year. The ministerial cabinet approved the project law again on March third, 2020 and it was only after a difficult process – caused by the effects of the pandemic on parliamentary processes – that the law was finally passed on December 29th, 2020 (LOMLOE, 2020). Its application and normative development began immediately and continues to this day.

As can be observed by its timeline, the process for the passage of the law in parliament began at the start of the pandemic, a fact which had an impact on the procedures. At the same time, the coincidence of the parliamentary debate with the adoption of measures to respond to the disruption of school life provided an opportunity to establish connections between the two processes. We could go as far as to affirm that the experience acquired during the pandemic and the need to react to unforeseen situations likely resulted in changes and improvements to the law and its subsequent development. This worked the other way around as well; the pandemic forced lawmakers to reconsider aspects that were insufficiently dealt with in the original drafting of the law, while discussion of the law led to a rethinking of some of the decisions pertaining to the needs arising from the new health concerns. We can see it as a process of mutual interaction, as I will attempt to demonstrate below.

The Immediate Reaction to the Pandemic

As we alluded to above, in-person educational activity was replaced overnight by remote teaching, bringing a profound change to everyday school life. Part of this involved resorting to available technological and didactic tools, even when these were not always adequate.

The Spanish educational system had begun taking decisive steps towards its digitalization in prior years. The program Escuelas Conectadas,Footnote 2 financed by the European Union, had brought technological infrastructure – including high-speed and wireless connectivity – to more than 40% of Spanish schools and 45% of non-university students. Programs for developing digital competency among teachers had been established, along with the digital community eTwinning,Footnote 3 associated with the Erasmus+ program. Regional administrations, as well as schools operating on their own initiative, had developed platforms such as web portals and educational software, often in conjunction with private enterprises working in the technological and editorial fields.

Notwithstanding these advances, Spain was still not able to offer an exclusively online education in regular schools. As in other educational systems, the use of digital technology had been seen mainly as a support for in-person teaching, and in no way an alternative system to be used independently. According to a recent survey,Footnote 4 50. 8% of teachers and headteachers use technology for making school reports, 32. 9% for formal assessments and 30. 2% for non-formal assessments. In addition, 81% of teachers and 87% of headteachers think that the use of technology should combine with traditional resources and current teaching methods. These conditions contributed to limiting the use of technology under the new circumstances. However, teachers, students, families, and educational authorities wasted no time in trying to ensure the continuation of teaching activity, even when this meant relying on very diverse, unequal means. Lacking any precise idea as to how long the exceptional situation might last, teaching activity continued to move firmly in the direction of remote, online education, with the objective of avoiding an interruption in the student learning.The reaction to the new situation was immediate, with all the educational authorities, national and regional, and school teams striving to find answers to the new challenges they were facing. Table 11.1 synthesizes the key activities developed and decisions taken from March to September 2020.

Table 11.1 Timeline of key activities and decisions affecting education since March 2020 to beginning of 2020–2021 academic year
Full size table

A sample of policy decisions made by the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training during the months of confinement includesFootnote 5:

  • Effective immediately, all the autonomous regions were provided access to materials for remote VET that the Ministry had been elaborating starting in 2019 (a total of 1162 professional modules corresponding to 104 diplomas and specialization courses). Access was also given to all materials used in other levels (primary, lower secondary education and baccalaureate) available in the Centro de Innovación y Desarrollo de la Educación a Distancia (CIDEAD).Footnote 6 Autonomous regions incorporated this material into their educational portals and platforms, allowing for access by teachers, who did make use of it.

  • Also in the very first days, the web portal Aprendo en CasaFootnote 7 was created, offering educational resources, tools, and applications for teachers, students, and families. This was complemented by a variety of initiatives from the autonomous regions. The portal received more than 15 million page visits per day, with a peak of 23 million visits on 23 April.

  • Through the Instituto Nacional de Tecnologías Educativas y Formación del Profesorado (INTEF), the web portal Recursos Educativos para el Aprendizaje en LíneaFootnote 8 was launched, providing tools and resources for teachers to continue remote teaching. Specific courses for teacher training, some with assigned tutors and others open to all, offered resources for online teaching as well as project-based teaching and cybersecurity. Some 22,000 teachers participated in the 16 open courses that were offered between March and July

  • With the collaboration of the Spanish public television channel Radio Televisión Española (RTVE), the educational program Aprendemos en CasaFootnote 9 was launched. The program, which aired for five hours daily from Monday through Friday, was designed for students between the ages of 6 and 16 and soon became quite popular. More than 2600 videos were shown over the 60 days that it was broadcast (until July 2020), provided by more than 110 entities and individuals who collaborated on a voluntary basis. These included publishers, educational portals, Youtube creators, teachers and other providers of online educational content. Some 14. three million viewers benefitted from the project, even if there is no precise data about the percentage of students following them regularly. The program did not continue after schools were re-opened in September 2020.

  • To close the existing digital gap, private entities were called upon to provide technological resources that would enable the most vulnerable students to enjoy access to online teaching in the most efficient manner. Beginning on 30 March, the Ministry distributed to the autonomous regions 23,000 cards for access to high-speed Internet, 1000 smartphones, 2400 tablets, 131 computers, and 1500 scientific calculators. This was meant to be a first, urgent response for the most vulnerable sectors of the population and was subsequently followed by more ambitious initiatives.

As we can see, the pandemic spurred a rapid flurry of more or less accurate responses to the problems observed. Some of these problems, such as the need to develop the digital competencies of teachers, students, and families, the need to equip schools with programs, platforms, and computer equipment, or the need to accompany vulnerable students to avoid dropout, had been identified previously and were already being addressed. Other problems had been diagnosed but were waiting for a response, such as the digital gap, the insufficient cooperation between teachers, and the revision of the basic knowledge that was meant to constitute the core of the curriculum. These issues, which the Spanish educational community had been debating and discussing for years, took on a new urgency and relevance in the new situation (Trujillo, 2020).

Responses to problems after March 2020 came from different sources, offering a varied picture of initiatives. On the one hand, the Ministry of Education and regional authorities worked cooperatively to provide resources and materials according to a common strategy debated at the Conferencia Sectorial de Educación. On the other hand, schools, and school associations (for instance, private school organizations) made their own decisions about web resources, teaching materials, and models for remote instruction (teleclasses, online teaching and learning activities, asynchronous communication). This variety of initiatives created disparities among schools and students, even if this situation was not subject to a rigorous evaluation. Many schools reported a positive experience with remote learning, while others were non-committal.

Main Challenges and Lines of Response

To confront these challenges, cooperation between state and regional educational authorities needed reinforcement. Secondly, it was necessary to establish connections between the provisions contained in the law that was working its way through the parliament and the decisions being adopted for the purpose of enabling school activity to continue through the 2019–2020 and the 2020–2021 school years. Finally, additional resources were required for new personnel and for putting the programs designed for facing the new challenges into operation.

State and Regional Authority: The mechanisms for territorial cooperation within Spain’s highly decentralized educational system worked smoothly in the new, unforeseen circumstances (Tiana, 2020a, b, c). In the six months between the declaration of the state of emergency and the start of the 2020–2021 school year, the Conferencia Sectorial de Educación and its work committees held a total of 21 meetings that included regional education authorities from each autonomous region. They collaborated on decisions concerning the continuity of the school year, exchanged relevant information, wrote up or requested legal and technical reports on thorny issues, and shared educational resources.

In a parallel fashion, the European Union and other international organizations launched a variety of collaborative forums and mechanisms to exchange information and experiences and for adopting coordinated decisions. Especially relevant for Spain were the monthly meetings of European Union education ministers where national plans of action were presented and shared. These meetings served to establish contact with other countries and obtain first-hand information regarding measures that had been taken as well as to attempt to work in a coordinated manner in such difficult circumstances. Latin American organizations as well as others associated with the OECD also held special meetings. Some of the documents coming out of these meetings proved valuable in designing educational policies with which to confront the COVID-19 pandemic.

Building a Coalition: we should remember that the parliamentary debate about the new law took place during the end of the 2019–2020 school year and the beginning of the following academic year, after which it was passed in December 2020 (LOMLOE, 2020). During this period several important measures were adopted to ensure the smooth continuation of school life. Chief among these was the “Acuerdos para el desarrollo del tercer trimestre del curso 2019–2020 y el inicio del curso 2020-2021” (Agreement concerning the completion of the third trimester of the 2019–2020 school year and the start of the 2020–2021 school year), adopted at the Conferencia Sectorial de Educación meeting held on April 15th, 2020. This document contained seven proposals:

  1. 1.

    Taking care of people’s well-being as a fundamental principle

  2. 2.

    Maintaining the planned duration of the 2019–2020 academic year

  3. 3.

    Adapting teaching activity to the circumstances

  4. 4.

    Conferring flexibility to the curriculum and to didactic programs

  5. 5.

    Adapting evaluations, certifications, and decisions on students’ matriculation to the following grade for the 2019–2020 academic year

  6. 6.

    Working in a more coordinated way

  7. 7.

    Preparing for the 2020–2021 school year.

Five of the seventeen autonomous regions failed to subscribe to the document (Orden EFP/365/ 2020) due to their disagreement with points concerning increased flexibility around students’ matriculation to the next grade and receiving certifications. In a conference held on June 11th, 2020, fifteen of the seventeen regions signed an important document dealing with the organization of the 2020–2021 school year (Orden EFP/561/ 2020).

Some of the novelties of the law that were under discussion took the form of immediate, urgent measures in response to the pandemic; This was the case for the new criteria for student assessment or course repetition, adopted after strong discussion during the Conferencia Sectorial de Educación, which were later incorporated into the law. In some cases, the correspondence between pandemic measures and reform was direct, while in other instances adaptations were made to respect previous legislation until the new law was in place. Either way, there is no doubt that the reform work that had been carried out in previous months would become invaluable in the aftermath of the pandemic. At the same time, it spurred political and ideological debates that carried through the parliamentary processes and remain to this day.

The debates that took place within the Conferencia Sectorial de Educación and in the media foreshadowed some of the positions that would be espoused during the parliamentary debate about the law, providing a glimpse of potential points of contention or agreement. This.

Additional Resources: Implementing the COVID response measures required the use of new, additional resources that enabled Spain to re-open school relatively quickly in comparison to other countries. Respecting interpersonal distance required smaller groups of students, meaning that new teachers needed to be hired. In some cases, school buildings had to be remodeled to adapt spaces to social distancing requirements. Equipping schools with technological, didactic, and hygienic-sanitary material also required new resources. Among the most important decisions in the sphere of special funding and resources were the launch of a program providing individual computers and IT equipment for students most affected by the digital gap; the allocation of 2 billion Euros to the autonomous regions for the adaptation of personnel and schools; the establishment of special programs for the school populations most affected by the pandemic; and the increase in the amount and number of grants and scholarships. These contributions undoubtedly helped facilitate a return to in-person teaching at the start of the 2020–2021 academic year, making Spain one of the countries whose schools were closed for the shortest length of time. This first disbursement of resources was followed by the passage and application of the Plan de Recuperación, Transformación y Resiliencia, promoted and underwritten by the European Union. Over the course of three years (2021, 2022, and 2023) we have seen a robust investment in economic and social transformation within European countries, who have placed a special emphasis on education and vocational education and training. During this period, Spain has invested 5 billion additional Euros in the improvement of the educational and formational capital of its population. This funding has enabled programs that can respond to new challenges such as the digitalization of the educational system, early school leaving rates, attending to vulnerable school populations, encouraging VET and improving educational access to children under the age of three.

To arrive at a more objective, precise analysis of the efforts made so far and their degree of success, we need to focus more closely on some of the specific areas that represent the greatest challenges. The presentation and analysis of some of these will provide us with an idea of the current situation of educational transformation and its relationship to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Digitalization and the Digital Gap

The overnight switch from in-person teaching to an online, remote mode of education made the need for an increased, rapid digital transformation clear. But it also served to underline the value of in-person schooling, which was declared to be an indispensable principle in the agreements adopted by the Conferencia Sectorial de Educación and which was crucial in the rapid reopening of schools. A certain consensus exists in Spain around the idea that exclusively online education, while necessary in some situations, − is not desirable in general. The Minister of Education, Isabel Celaá, declared at the beginning of 2020–2021 academic year that remote education was very useful during school closure, but does not replace in-person teaching and students’ socialization. While certain voices call for extending the use of digital technology in education, in-person instruction is still seen as something for which there is no substitute, especially among younger and more vulnerable students. Consequently, the challenge posed using digital technology in education has less to do with building models and resources as an alternative than with developing types of models that can be combined in a flexible manner with group and in-person teaching.

We must also keep in mind that there is a digital gap in Spain, usually associated with access – or lack thereof – to technological connectivity and devices (INE, 2021). But this disadvantage, which we could call an access divide, is only the first level; to this we must add the use divide – relating to the time and quality of use - and the school divide, having to do with the competency of teachers and the availability of platforms and resources for teaching support (Fernández Enguita, 2020). Furthermore, other studies confirm the fact that the digital divide is at the same time a social divide, as it affects households situated in the lower quintiles to a greater degree (Save the Children, 2020).

In consequence, the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training, in collaboration with the public enterprise Red.es, launched a program of territorial cooperation (“Educa en digital”) in 2020 that provided devices and connectivity to more than 600,000 students who were lacking these resources. As part of the Plan de Recuperación, in 2021 this initial measure was followed by two investment programs that reinforced the provision of individual computers to needy students and improved schools’ technological infrastructures. A complement to this can be found in the ambitious program that aspires to bring by 2024 the digital competency of 80% of the around 720,000 non-university teachers up to the levels outlined in the framework approved by the Conferencia Sectorial de Educación.Footnote 10 Additionally, the LOMLOE includes several dispositions pertaining to the digitalization of the educational system, such as the elaboration of a digital plan for each school and curricular guidelines for the digital competency of students.

The Care and Well-being of Students

As important as reducing the digital gap was, there were other important challenges that could not be neglected. The interruption of in-person activities meant that many students found themselves disconnected from the educational system, increasing their risk of dropping out. This issue is not socially homogeneous in its effects, having a greater impact on vulnerable and underprivileged students. While the inequalities of society have always been felt in the realm of education, during COVID they were further exacerbated.

In consequence, the Spanish education system was forced to reconsider the kind of support that these students receive and to determine the best way to help them overcome their marked disadvantages. An array of national reports have highlighted the importance of attending to these vulnerable collectives that find themselves in a situation of educational emergency (UNICEF, 2020).

To address this matter a special emphasis was placed on reinforcing tutorial activities and on performing early diagnoses of students’ difficulties. While tutorial action is crucial for the student’s orientation and emotional management, as well as for mediating between family and community, early diagnostic measures are essential in allowing for timely, individualized preventive interventions. For this purpose, two programs forming part of the Plan de Recuperación were launched in 2020. Programa para la orientación, avance y enriquecimiento educativo #PROA+ (Program for educational orientation, advance and enrichment #PROA+) provides support and orientation for vulnerable students in 3000 Spanish schools.Footnote 11 The second program is centered on the creation of Unidades de Acompañamiento y Orientación (Units of Support and Counseling) for educationally vulnerable students and their families, and aspires to create 2500 of these units by 2024.Footnote 12

The need to attend to situations of personal and emotional frailty extends beyond the needs of the vulnerable collectives and applies more generally to the care and well-being of students. In fact, a study made by the Multidisciplinary Working Group on Mental Health among Children and Adolescents (Grupo de Trabajo Multidisciplinar sobre Salud Mental en la Infancia y Adolescencia), composed by several organizations of Pediatrics and Psychiatry, revealed that mental health has deteriorated since the beginning of the pandemic. Mental disorders in 2021 had increased by 47% and suicidal behavior by 59% in comparison with 2019 data.Footnote 13

While the concept of care has always been an object of debate in education (What does it mean exactly? Who is responsible for it? How should it be organized?), in times like these it takes on added importance. We hear more and more voices calling for schools to actively pay attention to the well-being of their members and to make this an explicit objective. This in turn has led to a rethinking of the terms of personal and academic orientation, of the systems used in the monitoring and support of vulnerable students, and of the personalization of learning. The LOMLOE contains various provisions pertaining to these matters, conferring an importance and regulation to them that allows for more efficient responses to growing challenges in a post-pandemic world.

Basic Knowledge and the Development of Key Competencies

Another important effect brought by the change in teaching mode in the final months of the 2019–2020 school year was the difficulty in completing the intended curricula for each level, grade, and subject. The obstacles were such that prescribed curricula had to be reconsidered as well as the methodology required to work on them. In some cases, it was possible to maintain the rhythm of teaching thanks to the availability of materials and the commitment of all, while in other instances the pace slowed down considerably. Some students had limitations in their access to certain contents, while others were unable to study them adequately or stumbled upon serious alterations in their learning process. This led to a need to reevaluate the criteria and practices used in evaluating the knowledge acquired. These evaluations, which had important implications in determining whether a student matriculated the next grade or received a diploma, became a contentious matter in the political and public sphere.

Retention decreased during the 2019–2020 school year across primary and secondary levels of the education system. Although rates of retention had been gradually decreasing in previous years, the pandemic exacerbated these rates considerably. For some people the decision to consider repetition as a last measure (replacing it for prevention and recovery measures) meant a clear, unacceptable reduction of academic rigor. But for many other people an excessive retention demonstrated a need for reform across the Spanish education system. The pandemic provided Spanish educators with an opportunity to open a discussion on that issue and to incorporate some of the lessons learned as part of the process of preparation of the new law.

The difficulty to deliver high-quality instruction during the pandemic also raised several debates about the consequences on learning. A debate was raised regarding learning losses, chronic absenteeism, and increase in student dropout rates. The Spanish education system’s challenges regarding these issues were relatively mild compared to peer OECD countries due to its successful reopening campaign. On the other hand, the true academic impact of COVID on Spanish students has not yet been properly evaluated due to regional debate on the issue. The lack of pre- and post-COVID evaluation means that data is only available in some municipalities. One of the most rigorous, independent studies conducted in the Basque Country did not find evidence of learning loss between students by socioeconomic status:

This suggests that the reopening campaign was successful in mitigating inequality, and that there is no trade-off between a safe reopening and catching up interventions. A safe reopening which focuses on all students could be, in the short-term, the most efficient catching up strategy for the pandemic’s learning loss. However, we find that factors linked to schools are crucial mediators driving learning loss differences. The results show that the learning effects of the pandemic are mostly explained by between-school differences: we observe a large decline in learning for public schools, as well as a learning loss in private schools with prior low performance (Arenas & Gortázar, 2022).

The release of results of the last rounds of PIRLS and PISA will provide Spain with valuable information about learning outcomes which will allow educators to measure the exact dimension of learning losses.

Beyond these controversies, what became clear immediately, given the difficulties brought about by remote teaching, was the need to revise the curricula actually taught at school. According to a survey made in June 2020, more than 55% of teachers prioritized adjusting curricula to their students’ needs (Trujillo et al., 2020: 39). Consequently, the debate surrounding school curricula, which had been going on for some time, focused on what has come to be known as basic knowledge or essential learning: the knowledge that students need to navigate unforeseen circumstances and interpersonal challenges in their day-to-day lives. Some authors conceive this type of knowledge as basic cultural capital, something all students need for their personal and professional development (Soler, 2020). To address the importance of this domain, competencies surrounding cultural capital were added to LOMLOE. The law being drafted in 2020 contained important provisions in this direction. One of the central elements was a revision of the curricular model, one that would bring it closer into line with that being used in other countries, Portugal among them.

In Spain, the pandemic provided a policy window to fine-tune some of the provisions included in an already-in process educational reform to produce even greater results and improve upon the original project. It also played a part in the development of the curricular aspect of the LOMLOE. During the 2020–2021 and the 2021–2022 academic years, significant work was done on the design and development of shared curricula for the pre-university levels, part nation-wide and part regional. The new curricula have begun to be applied starting in September 2022 and will be completed over the 2022–2023 and 2023–2024 school years.

The Strengthening of the Teaching Profession

The pandemic has also shone a light on the need to develop new approaches to teaching practices and schoolwork. For example, the way students organized their work changed considerably during lockdown, when they received assignments from different teachers and were expected to complete each of these tasks. Under these circumstances of altered timetables and school calendars, the importance of coordination and cooperation among teachers – to ensure the relevance and manageability of students’ workloads – was more evident than ever. The difference between coordinating teaching activities appropriately or not doing so had a significant impact on students, as they and their families discovered.

The Spanish educational system is known to suffer from the lack of cooperation among teachers in general, a fact shown in several national and international studies (Ministerio de Educación y Formación Profesional, 2019, 2020). An increasing number of voices – ranging from specialists to administrators and teachers – are calling for greater cooperation and coordination. Even the calls to develop codocencia (co-teaching, i. e., several teachers working with one group of students) have received considerable support. The pandemic, in revealing the inadequacy of traditional practices for responding to contemporary challenges, has only made the need for change more evident. Nevertheless, only 35% of teachers are concerned about the lack of cooperation as a determinant of success in schools. (Trujillo et al., 2020: 31). As a number of educators believe that cooperation is the key to COVID recovery, many of them have responded with a surge of pedagogical innovations whose effectiveness can just now begin to be scrutinized.

While cooperation and pedagogy represent only two of the many categories of change that may be introduced into instruction in Spain, the debate has created a sense of urgency regarding the need for a careful revision of the teaching profession in general. This includes paying adequate attention to elements such as initial formation, access to the profession, and professional development. To address this sense of urgency, the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training has recently opened a process, currently under development, of public debate and reflection on the reformation of the teaching profession (Ministerio de Educación y Formación Profesional, 2022).

New Governance of the Educational System

The effects of remote learning made immediately clear the need to adopt new forms of governance of the educational system and schools. Decision-making could no longer follow traditional criteria, given that the channels used for making decisions, for the orientation and supervision in schools, and for monitoring school activities, were new.

The need for reform could be felt at two levels. Although limited school autonomy has been a characteristic trait of the Spanish educational system, the pandemic revealed its considerable shortcomings. Schools were able to exercise during the pandemic an autonomy that system norms have usually limited. However, the myriad, unforeseeable situations that schools had to deal with, along with the ever-changing circumstances in which they carried out their instructional activity, showed that schools may be trusted, making the need for greater school autonomy patent. The limited school autonomy, a characteristic trait of the Spanish educational system, revealed, under these circumstances, its considerable shortcomings. A reform, therefore, was needed to reinforce this autonomy in several directions - including at the curricular and organizational levels – and measures for this purpose were included in the new law. While it is still too soon to evaluate the real impact of the proposed modifications, the pandemic did serve to make school communities and educational authorities more aware of the need to reinforce school autonomy and of the benefits that this could bring.

On the other hand, the need to respond to the demands of students throughout the entire country required the adoption of decisions made through consensus among the different regional administrations. Spain’s highly decentralized educational system – a product of the Spanish Constitution of 1978 – has yet to fully develop the channels for coordination among its territories. The principal entity for such collaboration is the Conferencia Sectorial de Educación. The model, like those found in Germany and Canada, needs to go further in fostering the cooperation that we now view as indispensable. We have already seen how increased cooperation produced positive outcomes for students and teachers during the pandemic, making it critical that cooperation be written into guidelines. As with the previous question, it is still too early to evaluate the impact of the changes made, which in this case have more to do with the entity’s operation than with its norms.

Current Situation and Future Perspectives

In September 2022, a new school year began with virtually no pandemic-related restrictions, and schools were ready to carry out their work in a way that resembles “normal” practice. However, some of the experiences from the last two years have left their mark on aspects of the usual school organization, both in matters of health and hygiene as well as in pedagogical issues. Schools have now formed contingency plans and structures to prepare for and respond to unforeseen events. Many of the new provisions contained in the LOMLOE have already begun to be implemented. While the implementation of some measures began in September 2021, most of the regulations are meant to be adopted during the school years 2022–2023 and 2023–2024. Such is the case for the new curricula for different educational levels, designed to produce changes in the teaching and learning processes and school operations.

The last two-plus years have offered Spain a glimpse of a curious interaction between a reform project that was in the process of being drafted, debated, and applied and pandemic response measures. The reform project contained in the LOMLOE included several measures dealing with, for example, basic knowledge; the processes involved in evaluation, diplomas and matriculation; and cooperation among teachers. The experience gained during this period served to debate, fine-tune, and explain some of the new provisions. Political and ideological debate was also a reality, and it will continue to be so, but a process of change has already been launched.

Spain’s pandemic response not only allowed the continuation of educational activity, albeit by different means; but also provided an opportunity to propose, modify, and anticipate aspects of the educational reform that the government committed itself to in 2018. The experience resulting from this interaction has been interesting, to say the least, and the time has come to analyze and evaluate its real impact. While it may still be too soon, the process has begun, and these next few years are likely to produce specific studies on many of the matters under consideration. For example, educational administrations have already launched plans for the evaluation of programs implemented during this period to determine their real impact. There is no question that this is an important moment for the Spanish educational system and its future perspectives, and it is critical that we work together to help identify its achievements as well as its shortcomings.