The school year 2020-2021 in Spain during the pandemic

Abstract

This technical report describes the educational response to COVID-19 in Spain during the 2020-2021 academic year, a Spanish version of the research results is included in the annex. The study focused on compulsory education and it was designed as a qualitative research with a sample of 34 participants, including school leaders, teachers, families and students from different types of schools and regions in Spain. The main conclusions describe an uncertain start of the school year, but gradually, the choice of face-to-face teaching as the main instruction mode revealed successful in general terms. However, some problems appeared concerning students with special needs, relevant changes in teaching methodology and about the use of blended learning in Secondary Education, which is considered to have been quite problematic or even unsuccessful. On the positive side, a deep revision of the curriculum by schools and teachers, and the reduced ratio of students per teacher to keep interpersonal distance, may have compensated the difficulties during this academic year. This report also includes a Spanish version of the research results in its annex.