The effect of decentralisation on Spanish literacy
The year 1975 in Spain meant a great change in all aspects that also took place in education. Democracy and the constitution brought with it a process of decentralisation of powers from the central state to the 17 autonomous communities that make up the country. This process meant that education in each part of Spain was controlled by its regional government, so that education laws were different in each region. Did this process lead to more distance between communities? The answer is that in general no, although there are still some doubts due to the great differences in some aspects between different autonomous communities.
Dictatorship times
Literacy levels by autonomous communities before the authoritarian regime. (Source: ElConfidencial.com)
During the time of the dictatorship in Spain (1939-1975), the central government, i.e. the state, was in charge of controlling education in all regions of Spain without any kind of difference. During these years, literacy levels were quite low because the educational function was only a vehicle for transmitting ideology, without caring too much about its internal organisation and structure, and this caused literacy rates to drop drastically since the second Spanish republic just before the regime where education had improved considerably due to its educational laws.
This low literacy rate is clearly evidenced in 1965 when the percentage of illiterate adults in Spain was 17% according to INE figures (2003) and 14% among young people. But this problem changed greatly with the arrival of democracy and the decentralisation of education throughout the country. This big change meant that in just 15 years, specifically in 1983, the figures changed to only 8% among adults and 3% among young people. This was due to the fact that education in Spain no longer had the function of indoctrinating the youth, but was an engine of knowledge, which caused literacy levels to rise in just a few years, and with the development of decentralisation in all the communities, it improved drastically.
This improvement is evidenced in the data of the literacy rate among young people (people between 14 and 23 years) in 2013 with the process of educational decentralisation fully embedded in society, the literacy rate was 99.67%.
Times of change
Decentralisation was a moment of great relevance in the field of education and therefore of the literacy rate in Spain as it increased significantly. Between 1979 and 1983 the 17 Statutes of Autonomy were approved which created the respective 17 CCAA (Autonomous Communities). The process of autonomy began immediately after the promulgation of the Constitution, with the approval of the Basque and Catalan Statutes in 1979 and the consequent process of transferring powers to the Autonomous Communities in the so-called “fast track” (Article 151 of the EC). The transfers in education stood out for their quantitative importance, which were broken down into two blocks of subjects: those corresponding to non-university education (transferred between 1980 and 1981), and those affected to university education, which took place a few years later.
This process of decentralisation has provoked many differences of opinion as to whether this change was positive or not, but according to the data we can certify that there has been an evolution for the better, caused by compensation, which contrasts with the tired discourse entangled with radical nationalism that the management of education by the autonomous regions has led to an increase in differences. There are opinions that the decentralisation process has caused “enormous territorial differences” in education as a result of “an unequal distribution of resources that privileges certain territories” and, above all, of “the passivity and permissiveness of all the governments that have consciously chosen to abandon their functions in exchange for occasional political support”. But the data support a clear and correct position. In data, this means that the autonomous community that had the lowest rate of schooling in the 0-3 stage in 2000, Galicia, has gone on to surpass in 2017 the one that had the highest rate in 2000, Catalonia, therefore this form of control of education has been positive.
Literacy rate during the twentieth century (Source: INE)
The current reality
This process of improvement has led to a much greater increase in the development of the education system than before. In 2018, a study showed that the decentralisation process has helped to reduce the historical differences between the different autonomous communities. This is evident for example in the first cycle of early childhood education (0-3) where enrolment has grown by more than 25 percentage points and the CV (both in absolute figures and in the Coefficient of Variation (CV), a measure that expresses the relationship between the mean of the values and the standard deviation (the CV is higher when the data is more diverse and lower when there are fewer differences) has been reduced by more than two thirds since 2000. “In school enrolment rates, there has been a virtual convergence between all the autonomous communities,” the report explains.
Map of Spain (Source: Mapsoftheworld.com)
Nowadays
If we look at past evidence, Spain has created a stable education system and very high levels of education and literacy compared to previous decades. Furthermore, according to the data obtained from the PISA exams, we can see that in PISA 2012, Spanish students aged 15 obtained an overall average reading score of 488 points, similar to the average of the participating EU countries (489), so the performance is quite similar to the average of the European Union and gives us to understand that decentralisation was quite positive as the numbers are quite positive.
In conclusion, Spain has a lot of work to do to be able to be above the European average in many aspects of education, both technologically and educationally, and that is why it is working on many aspects and is developing numerous reforms to be able to finance an increase in the level of education and the system, which augurs that at some point it will achieve its objectives.
Literacy rate year 2018 by autonomous communities (Source: LaRazon.com)
The effect of decentralisation on Spanish literacy:
Hi! Really interesting blogpost. I’m not that familiar with Spanish history, so I didn’t know that the transition to democracy in the 1970s had such a far-reaching impact on the country’s education policy. Your blog helped me a lot to get a good overview of the consequences of decentralisation on the Spanish education system! In your text, you write that decentralisation has improved education and literacy in Spain. Do you know if there are approaches to help the older generation to become more literate so that they also benefit from decentralisation?
Thank you for your interest and your question is very interesting. The truth is that the arrival of decentralisation in Spain was very positive for everyone, including the older generations. Although during my blog I talk about young people because there are many more data if we focus on the older ones we can see that this process was very positive. As the educational control is divided by communities, each one of them has much more budget to spend than before on older people. For example, before devolution, the communities received from the central state barely 3% of the global GDP of the state, which then had to be divided among the 17 autonomous communities, and it was always unequal. Since the advent of decentralisation, each community has control and can allocate more money to help the elderly. For example, in Andalusia, before the decentralisation, it only received about 200 thousand euros for this problem whereas today, in 2017, it allocates about 4 million euros for the elderly and to reduce literacy.
On the other hand, in the past, because everything was on a much more global and national scale, literacy campaigns were hardly effective, but with the advent of decentralisation this has changed. Each autonomous community has its own control. During the beginning of the 21st century there have been numerous literacy campaigns for the elderly in the areas most affected by this situation. Since 2005 in the Castile and Leon region, literacy campaigns for the elderly have been carried out which have brought the illiteracy rate down from 6.4% in the region to 4.7% thanks to these campaigns and which would not have been possible without the advent of decentralisation, as these campaigns are controlled by the regional government and have much more control and effort than those that were carried out before.
I hope you have understood everything because it is a very complicated process to understand.
Interesting to see how these statistics have changes over the years. You mentioned enrollment rates and PISA exam scores, this seems like a relatively good way to estimate overall literacy. Are these factors used by the government to measure literacy rates? I see in your last chart the different literacy rates per autonomous community, do you happen to know what they based those percentages on?
Thank you for your interest in the subject. Regarding your question, the government is not responsible for the literacy tables or literacy rates, it is Unesco. This organisation does rely on this type of test with the pisa test in order to make a calculation and arrive at the final data. They also make use of street and household surveys, but most of the data are taken from official examinations where they assess the level in many aspects.although the government does not compile such statistics, they do make use of them in order to issue official statements on literacy.
Regarding the graph the percentages are based on the level obtained in reading and writing tests which are the two most relevant factors in assessing the literacy rate of a particular place, although there are some other variables such as the level in mathematics, the graph only assesses the two factors I have mentioned.
I hope you understand it better now