Complaint letter

 Dear Minister of Education,

I am sending you this letter to share with you my concern about the current situation of the education system in general, and the schools in particular in our country. I will try to remain objective and explain in a clear way my worries. I am not a part of the system, but I have enough information to give a fairly valid opinion about the subject.

The news about the Spanish education system are not good as long as I remember. For example, results on PISA tests are below the average year after year. Furthermore, students in Spain spend many more hours in the classroom than others from countries that obtain better results in the tests. Hence, it is pretty obvious that more time does not mean better learning. 

One of the main causes of this disastrous performance of our students is the importance given to memorization in the exams. Instead of fostering the learning of new skills, and using practical examples to better acquire new concepts, we keep memorizing a lot of data for the exams, and then, a few days later most of this knowledge is mainly forgotten. This explains why Spanish students perform badly in math and science subjects. Mastering these subjects implies to really understand them, it is not a matter of ability to memorize.

Another cause of the bad results is the lack of motivation of many teachers who are not vocational and just applied for the job because it is a job for life, with a good salary and good working hours. Besides, performance assessment is something personal because there is not a real system to evaluate their work. Then, we can compare the teacher's situation with a car with no obligation to pass the ITV (Vehicle Technical Inspection) every year. If the car's owner considers that it is in good condition, roads could be full of potential weapons if the owners are a little bit too optimistic.

Something curious about our schools is that the number of hours of class time in Spain is higher than the average, however, this is not reflected in performance. This is possibly due to the lack of motivation of an elevated number of educators.

There are some key points that authorities should rethink and try to improve. First of all, they should develop a good assessment system to review teachers' motivation and performance. Secondly, if a teacher does not fulfill the requirements of their position he or she should be dismissed. Finally, the way different subjects are explained in the classrooms should be reviewed and changed to avoid excessive and useless memorization. 

I would like to thank you for taking the time to read my opinions. I encourage you to take some action in order to make some improvements to our education system because the future of our country depends on it.

Sincerely yours,  Justme.