Txindoki-Jefferson Virtual Exchange

Friday, March 9, 2012

About Txindoki, our school

By Aitor Z and Amaia L

Beasain Instituto Publico (BIP) is located in Beasain and it’s a school created after the fusion of three different public school campuses: Alkartasuna, Loinazpe and Txindoki. The one in which we study is Txindoki. It’s a high school for 16-18 year olds, we call this level bachillerato. There are four different tracks: science, arts, technology and humanities. Our high school is the only one around Goierri that gives the opportunity to study arts. Moreover, there’s the option to study some lessons in English, such as maths, economics, history, and geography. The name of this project is the multilingual project.

Regarding the amount of people in Txindoki, there are 167 students in the first year and 149 students in the second year, plus 6 students in our special education/work training program for people with disabilities. Our classes can have as few as 7 people and a maximum of 30. Most have around 20-25 students.

As far as the people that comes to the school is concerned, we can find people from Goierri county (which consists of the towns of Lazkao, Idiazabal, Beasain, Ordizi, Zegama, Zerain, Zaldibi, Segura, Mutiloa, Ihurre, Ataun), Tolosaldea county (which includes towns called Tolosa, Ikaztegieta, Alegia…) and Urola county (Zumarraga, Legazpi, Urretxu…). Taking into account that Txindoki is a high school, teenagers of 16, 17, and 18 years old come. Nevertheless, there’s also people older than 18 years old, because they are doing the same school year again or because they want to study to gain knowledge.

People normally graduate at the age of 18 after finishing the second course having passed all the subjects. After it they give to you a degree assuring it.

In addition, there are some special lessons apart from school to help you with the subjects that you find more difficult. For example, maths. However, people that need more help or wanted to know more about the subject take private lessons.

Finally, we adress our teachers with their first name without using their last name. What’s more, we don’t use “usted” and we speak in a more familiar language. However, respectfully.

College Admissions in the Basque Country

By Ander and Mikel U.

What´s required to be admitted to college (university) is firstly to have the LH (primary school), DBH (secondary school) and DBHO (bachillerato—advanced seconday) diplomas. Plus you must take the “selectivity” (selectividad) exam.

The selectivity exam is a special exam that teenagers of age 18 take. This exam permits you to enter college if you pass the exam with a certain score. It’s important to comment that every university department has its own passing mark. For example, to get into medicine you must pass with 11.3 out of 14.

To explain how the college admissions are weighted we should say your grades from the first course of the bachillerato is 3 of 14, the second course of the bachillerato has the same value, and finally the selectivity exam has 8 of 14.

This exam has two parts: in the first one, called “General Exam”, we take five exams: Basque, Spanish and English; history or philosophy (the one you choose), and one subject you chose from your modality. This part is compulsory and must be passed in order for you to be able to enter college. The highest mark you can get is a 10. For some degrees, though, they ask higher marks than 10, and so, there is the other part, which is called “Specific Exam” and it’s not compulsory. Here the 2 other subjects from your modality are chosen, and universities value them with 2 points, 1 point or none depending on the degree you want (this is, the same subject won’t have similar weight in one university and in another). For instance, biology could be valued at 2 points by the Basque University of Medicine, because they are interested in people having that experience, whereas it won’t have any value for the Basque University of Translation and Interpretation, which would value by 2 points people having learned Latin. Thus, the highest mark you can get with this method, called “the Bolonian method”, is of 14.

The Educational System of the Basque Country

By Aitor V, Ana B, and Nahia

Pre-School (Educación infantil). From ages 2-5. During this time children learn to read and write. Most often, they attend the same school as the primary school students.

Primary (Educación primaria) From ages 6-12. We call these schools “colegio” in Spanish and “ikaskola” in Basque. When they are in primary, children start learning different subjects such as maths, natural sciences, and different languages (we have most of our subjects in Basque at this level, but have one hour a day of Spanish language arts and a couple hours a week of English).

Secondary (Educación Secundaria Obligatoria (ESO) in Spanish; “DBH” in Basque). From ages 12-16. We call these schools “instituto” in Spanish and “institutua” in Basque. We have four years of required secondary school. We don’t call them 7^th to 10^th grades like you do in the U.S., we say “primero de secundario,” “segundo de secundario” We continue developing the subjects, and in the last year, we have to start choosing some subjects of the modality we most like: sciences, humanities or arts. You must stay in school until age 16.

From here, you can decide to carry on studying, and so you will do the bachillerato (2 years of non-obligatory secondary education), or if you prefer to start training yourself to work immediately and study specifically for this work, you will do a mid-level work formation.

Work formation (high-level). Once you do the mid-level work formation, you can put yourself in the work world, and start working, or you can improve your practice in a high-level work formation. Once you finish this, and if you want to study a career, you make an entrance exam to college; or if you prefer, you can start in the work world.

Bachillerato From ages 16-18. This is a two year diploma in which you work in your modality (your specialty). All students are required to take all three languages (English, Spanish and Basque) both first and second year, as well as philosophy and history. Depending on your options you can work three different modalities: science (here you can chose technologic science or biomedical science), humanities (among which there are social humanities and pure humanities) and arts. When you finish, you get a degree that allows you to go to college, after passing an exam called “Selectividad” (see the separate blog entry about that) which lasts three days.

University. After the selectivity exam, depending on the mark you score, you can enter here or not, but most people do. This is because our government is interested in people having studies and encourages them to do so, so people don’t leave studies almost ever, according to statistics, less than the 7%. Almost all the degrees last 4 years, except for medicine (6 years), architecture (5 years)… After doing the degree you can start working. But it is also an option to continue studying to complement your studies by taking a master degree and after that a doctorate.