A comparative study of the objetctives of Primary Education: from the national to regional ambit/level

Abstract

The recognition of full competences in education by the Spanish Autonomous Regions and Autonomous Cities in the 1990s led to the establishment of a large number of educational curricula. However, with the arrival of the LOE and the LOMCE, each one these regions decreed its own Primary Education curriculum. The main objectives of this study have been, firstly, to analyce and compare the general objectives of Primary School stage established in the LOE and the LOMCE with those defined in the regional curricula derived from these laws and, secondly, to know the relationship between the similarity between the similarity of the compared objectives and the party politics of the governments that elaborated them. The sample is made up of all the regional curricula from both legislative periods (N = 36). In order to collect the information and compare the documents, an ad hoc instrument has been developed which includes a model of analysis and has made it possible to establish a Level of Curricular Similarity (LCS). Taking into account the level of similarity and difference found between each of the Primary School general objectives of each Autonomous Region with respect to its corresponding national objective, the following categories of analysis have been established: copied; expanded; reduced; modified; eliminated; and new creation. At the same time, it has been considered pertinent to allude to the subject matter of each of the objectives maintained or altered by each of the autonomous communities in order to find relations of similarity between the curricular decisions taken by these with respect to the national standard. The results show the disparity that some of the curricula present in their autonomous concretions, both inter- and intra-community, as well as the influence of the political tendency in this regard.