SPAIN

Country Report on ICT in Education

Available on http://insight.eun.org
2013

European Schoolnet Rue de Trves 61 1040 Brussels, Belgium www.eun.org

Contact: Carlos J. Medina, Ministerio de Educacin

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 THE EDUCATION CONTEXT ...................................................................................................................... 1

1.1
Education Reform......................................................................................................................... 1
1.2
Key challenges/priorities for education ......................................................................................... 1
2. ICT POLICY ................................................................................................................................................ 1
2.1. Responsibilities ............................................................................................................................ 2
2.2. ICT policies for schools ................................................................................................................ 2
2.3. Specific ICT Initiatives....................................................................................................................2
2.4. ICT priorities...................................................................................................................................3
2.5. National characteristics (optional) ...................................................................................... ..........3
3. ICT in the curriculum ................................................................................................................................ 3
3.1. Curriculum framework .................................................................................................................. 3
3.2. ICT in the curriculum .................................................................................................................... 4
3.3. Students ICT competence ........................................................................................................... 4
3.4. Assessment schemes .................................................................................................................. 4
3.5. ICT-based assessment ................................................................................................................ 5
3.6. Quality assurance of the use of ICT in schools ............................................................................ 5
4. DIGITAL LEARNING RESOURCES AND SERVICE ................................................................................. 5
4.1. Content development strategies ................................................................................................... 5
4.2. E-content development ................................................................................................................ 5
4.3. User-generated content................................................................................................................ 6
4.4. Web 2.0 ........................................................................................................................................ 5
4.5. Content sharing ............................................................................................................................ 6
4.6. Learning Platforms ....................................................................................................................... 7
4.7
Access of SEN students.................................................................................................................7

5.6.
5.7

Incentives ..................................................................................................................................... 8
ICT supporting inclusion.................................................................................................................8

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5. TEACHER EDUCATION FOR ICT................................................................................................................6

5.1. ICT in initial teacher education ..................................................................................................... 6
5.2. ICT in in-service teacher education. ............................................................................................. 7
5.3. New initiatives .............................................................................................................................. 7
5.4. Assessment Schemes .................................................................................................................. 8
5.5. Training of Teacher Trainers ........................................................................................................ 8

1. THE EDUCATION AL CONTEXT

1.1

The following points are priorities in the draft of the new

educational law that is intended to be passed this year:

EDUCATION REFORM

The most recent legal reform of education was the 2006

Ley Orgnica de Educacin (LOE Law of Education), which is still in force. Currently there is a consultation process of a Draft Law to Improve the Quality of
Education (Ley Orgnica de Mejora de la Calidad Educativa LOMCE). The reform proposed by the LOMCE
is based on evidence and compiles best practices. It
aims at improving the quality in primary and secondary
education by reducing early drop-out rates and improving educational results according to international criteria
(both in the number of excellent students and in the
number of students that complete Compulsory Secondary Education), by promoting employability and stimulating students entrepreneurship.
The principles of this reform are mainly the increase of
schools autonomy, the reinforcement of the administrative capacity of the school managing body, the external
evaluations carried out at the end of each educational
stage, the streamlining of the educational offer and the
reduction in the offer of educational pathways.

To reduce the variety of requirements and demands of the educational system throughout
the country.

To lower the drop-out rates in the compulsory

educational levels (pupils under the age of 16).

To improve the rate of students achieving the

level of Compulsory Secondary Education.

To improve students level of knowledge in

basic subjects.

To establish a clear system of indicators of progress according to educational objectives.

To increase the autonomy of schools.

To generalise and spread the use of ICT for

education.

To promote and update vocational training

studies.

To improve the learning of foreign languages.

To streamline the educational offer.

2. ICT POLICY

1.2
KEY CHALLENGES/PRIORITIES FOR
EDUCATION

2.1.

The following points are considered priorities in the current Law of Education:

The Spanish administration is a highly decentralised

system where Autonomous Communities administer
resources and legislate under the general umbrella of
national law. In the case of education, all Autonomous
Communities are fully responsible for the schools in
their territory, including the promotion of ICT in schools.
This provides a varied setting with as many plans as Autonomous Communities, addressing topics from connectivity in schools, software provision, school management software, open software adoption (with different
customised Linux distributions) to teacher training
plans, among other issues.

To lower the drop-out rates at compulsory

educational levels (under 16).

To promote quality in education, while

preserving an inclusive system with a strong
emphasis on economic aid in order to
compensate for social inequalities.

To promote vocational training through

increasing its quality and social recognition
and through flexible schemes that allow
students to enter the system and transfer
credits easily.

To enhance the use of ICT in schools.

The Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport coordinates some initiatives at national level in collaboration

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RESPONSIBILITIES

with the Autonomous Communities through the National Workgroup for Learning Technologies. Until
last year, these initiatives included the national repository for open digital resources Proyecto Agrega
(agrega.educacion.es), which will evolve into a new
collaborative site, or the now complete project Escuela
2.0. At present, the national initiatives, in coordination
with the Autonomous Communities, are being remodelled and a new overall plan is being devised: Plan de
Cultura Digital en la Escuela (Digital Culture in School
Plan). The design and implementation of this new plan
requires collaboration with the Autonomous Communities in order to articulate the new actions with the ongoing related regional plans, since the regional authorities are responsible for the allocation and administration
of resources in all cases.

management systems of the different educational administrations and the rest of systems
and tools of the educational ecosystem, especially virtual learning environments, to ensure
easier interoperability between content repositories.

A collaborative site of open educational resources (OER), as a development of the already existing Agrega 2 platform.

A general catalogue of commercial educational resources, which will guarantee the viability of the publishing industry and the creation of educational resources while promoting
the access of the education and training community to quality content.

Teachers digital competence, taking as a

starting point the essential common points of
the different Administrations and assimilating
them to the training carried out in other professional spheres, taking into account a possible
agreed regulation of the competences that
teachers should acquire.

Each stage of action of the new plan is articulated

through a committee of experts formed by the Ministry
of Education, representatives from the Autonomous
Communities and external experts.
2.2.

ICT POLICIES FOR SCHOOLS

As mentioned in Section 2.1, since 2012 the Ministry of

Education has been working on the elaboration of a new
ICT plan for schools: the Plan de Cultura Digital en la
Escuela. This new plan comprises five main lines of action:

Connectivity and school internet access,

taking advantage of already existing networks.

Standards and interoperability between the

2.3.

1.

SPECIFIC ICT INITIAT IVES

Interactive whiteboards, laptops/notebooks,

tablets or other mobile technology

After the distribution of IWBs and netbooks,

the Ministry is working on standards of digital
resources for their best use.
2.

Bring your own device (BYOD)

Though BYOD is taken into account in the Ministry

of Educations new ICT Plan, this only recommends
the establishment of a common reference of the
requisites that these devices should meet for educational use.

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Since 2005, there has been an increased interest in

Spain to promote a general collaborative setting between the different Educational Administrations at national and regional level for the development of the information society in the educational world. This interest
is clearly seen in the project Internet en el Aula (Internet in the Classroom 2005-2008, see Section 4.4.)
and the project Escuela 2.0 (School 2.0 2009-2012).
As a result of this latter project, 729,518 computers have
been distributed, 29,867 digital classrooms have been
equipped and more than 160,000 teachers have been
trained.

3.

Cloud computing

No specific initiative, but efforts are being made to

promote a more common use of school virtual environments provided by the regional educational
administrations.
4.

Inclusion and special needs

ICT will serve to meet the requirements of special

needs learners and promote inclusion.
5.

Connectivity (e.g. wireless internet, optical fibre connections)

Global School Connectivity. The aim is to advance

in the objective that all schools in the country enjoy full
access to internet. This should be done in collaboration with the regional administrations to improve the
quality of connectivity in a viable and sustained way
through agreements with agents in the telecommunications sector.
6.

Design of C21st century learning spaces

A framework of Virtual Learning Environments will

be proposed in the National ICT Plan.

ICT PRIORITIES

Area

High

ICT in teacher training

In-service teacher training
Curriculum development
ICT-based assessment
Infrastructure and
maintenance
Digital learning resources
School-home connections
ICT for learners with disabilities/special needs
ICT-related research
e-Safety
Reducing the digital divide
Interactive Whiteboards
Netbook/notebooks
Tablets
Developing key competences

X
X

Developing 21st century skills

(critical thinking, problem
solving, communication, creativity, innovation)

Mid.

Low

X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X

2.5.
NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS (OPTIONAL)
As mentioned in Section 2.1, the Spanish administration
is a decentralised system where Autonomous Communities administer resources and legislate under the general umbrella of national law. In the case of education,
all Autonomous Communities are fully responsible for
the schools in their territory, including the promotion of
ICT in schools. This provides a varied setting with as
many plans as Autonomous Communities.

3. ICT IN THE CURRICULUM

3.1.

CURRICULAR FRAMEWORK

The Spanish Ministry of Education establishes a minimum curriculum for the different levels of compulsory
education, which is shared by all Autonomous Communities. This curriculum represents 65% of the total cur-

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7. Any other ICT initiative

Other ICT initiatives in the country are related to the Interoperability among different education management
systems and learning environments, the evolution of a
Collaborative platform of OERs, the creation of a Catalogue of commercial educational resources and materials from the publishing sector and the establishment
of a model for Developing teachers digital competences at different levels. (See section 2.2)

2.4.

riculum, except in those regions that have another official language besides Spanish, where it represents only
55%. The regional educational authorities in each autonomous community develop the rest of the curriculum
so that it expresses their preferences and local characteristics. The curriculum is arranged in subjects, with
corresponding goals, content and evaluation criteria; it
also references the European Key Competences
Framework.
3.2.

ICT IN THE CURRICULU M

In primary and secondary education, ICT is considered

to be a key competence and is covered in all subject
areas of the curriculum. One of the main goals of primary education1 is to begin to use information and
communication technology and develop critical awareness of the messages sent and received.
As a separate subject, ICT is first encountered at secondary school level2 (7th to 10th grade); students study
the subject of technology (which is partly devoted to
computer science) for at least one year from the 7th to
the 9th grade, and optionally in the 10th grade. Moreover, in the 10th grade, students can choose to study
computer science as a separate subject.

technologies for conceptual analysis and the recognition of the properties of functions and graphs. These
goals try to make students competent in the use of ICT
as a means of obtaining and processing information as
well as a way of expressing themselves.
3.3.

Targets can be divided into two categories: subject related targets, such as those mentioned above, and more
generic targets that coincide with the digital competence
of the European key competences framework. See also
Section 3.4.
3.4.

ICT competence is expressed in greater detail in the assessment criteria. For example, in Natural Science in
secondary school the following capacities are assessed:

Official detailed document (in Spanish) for the minimum curriculum

for secondary level: tinyurl.com/39fnv9e

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the capacity of acquiring meaningful

information from different sources, including
information and communication technologies,
and the ability to state conjectures about both
naturally-occurring as well as induced
phenomena, in experiments or experience,
where the consistency of the reasoning
process should be valued over finding the
correct answer. Special attention must be paid
to the oral and written expression of the results,
whether on paper or in digital format, which

In secondary education it is established that students

must develop basic skills in the use of information
sources to acquire new knowledge and basic training in
the field of technology, especially in information and
communication technologies. Furthermore, goals related to the use of ICT are detailed within the curriculum
of every school subject. In mathematics, for instance,
one of the defined goals is that of using information

Official detailed document (in Spanish) for the minimum

curriculum for primary level: tinyurl.com/39m6abb

ASSESSMENT SCHEMES

ICT competence is assessed in all subjects, except

when ICT becomes a subject itself. The national curriculum is organised in subjects, with specific content,
goals, assessment criteria and their contribution to the
European Key Competences Framework.

In post-compulsory secondary education, students can

choose to study the subject of information and communication technologies, which is offered either in the 11th
or 12th grade.

STUDENTS ICT COMPETENCE

must be illustrated with images, tables, graphs,

diagrams, summaries, etc.
Another example is Mathematics, where the following
capacities are assessed:
the capacity of applying percentages and
rates in order to solve everyday problems, as
well as financial problems, where the ability of
using a spreadsheet should be valued as a
function of the quantity and complexity of the
numbers used. This criterion is used to verify
the capacity to apply percentages, rates, and
percentage increases and decreases to problems related with frequent financial situations
and to evaluate the capacity of using information technologies to carry out the operations
when necessary.
3.5.

ICT-BASED ASSESSMENT

Only those schools with Learning Management Systems that record students output can implement ICTbased assessment.
3.6.
QUALITY ASSURANCE OF THE USE
OF ICT IN SCHOOLS
There are periodic national and regional surveys that
estimate how many teachers use ICTs and what they
use them for. Needless to say, all schools entering pilot
plans are closely monitored and have detailed evaluation plans.

4.1.
GIES

CONTENT DEVELOPMENT STRATE-

At present there are two main strategies regarding content development, one related to OER and the other to
commercial resources.

Regarding commercial content, the aim is to define the

technological structure and the functional design of a
site shared by publishers of digital textbooks and other
educational resources and their potential users
(schools, teachers, students and their families). This
catalogue will be connected to the platform with OER.
4.2.

E-CONTENT DEVELOPMENT

As mentioned above, there is a national initiative that

involves the development of the Agrega2 platform. All
the Autonomous Communities support this initiative and
aim to promote the use of the OER that can be found in
this platform. Moreover, some Autonomous Communities also have their own repositories with educational
content available for teachers.
Several Autonomous Communities are involved in different regional pilot plans for exploring digital resources
and materials and how they work in the class.
Moreover, all of the Autonomous Communities show an
interest in integrating, optimising and disseminating
among teachers the variety of materials offered in different platforms, both national (Agrega) and regional (Educamadrid, Educantabria, Aularagn, LliureX, Educarm, Averroes, Educa, Medusa, Eskola 2.0, etc.)

There already exists a platform for OER (Agrega2)

providing shared access to digital content and modules

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4. DIGITAL LEARNING RES OURCES AND

SERVICES

in all the Autonomous Communities. This platform contains a substantial amount and variety of content and it
is planned to be developed further in order to increase
its use in terms of access to and the creation of OER.
Some strategies to achieve this objective include making the platform more user-friendly; defining simple actions to generate, catalogue, edit and access content;
spreading its use to the whole Spanish speaking community; linking the platform to other sources; transforming the platform into a social network for teachers; and
making it sustainable and adapted to different user profiles. There are also resources in the different co-official
languages.

4.3.

USER - GENERATED CONTENT

There is a national contest through which the National

Institute for Educational Technologies and Teacher
Training of the Ministry of Education rewards the best
digital content (as well as teachers blog, school ICT
project, etc.). Most entries in the contest correspond to
teachers material, though a few belong to publishing
companies. Some Autonomous Communities also run
similar regional contests.

4.4.

The Ministry of Education supports (funding, managing,

hosting, etc.) two social-professional networks of teachers:

There are also a number of authoring tools that have

managed to build a community of users supported by
the educational authorities, the most relevant being
JClic (mainly Primary School), Malted (English as a
second language) Newton (Physics) and Descartes
(Mathematics). Teachers who master the use of these
tools regularly provide new digital content to these websites.

The
Good
Practice
Network
(recursostic.educacion.es/buenaspractic
as20/web) is a monitored showroom of good
practice for all pre-university education levels;
it also provides a place for announcements,
links of interest and tutorials.

Internet en el aula (Internet in the Classroom

internetaula.ning.com) is a community of
9000 teachers that is in some respects selforganised into 160 groups of interest focused
on the use of ICT in a specific subject, author
tools, teaching methodologies, etc. The
functionalities of this social platform encourage
peer interactions, offering webinars and
workshops (see Section 5.5). The number of
community members has rapidly grown since
2010.

In the future, it is intended that the educational social

network supported by the Ministry of Education will be
integrated in the Agrega platform.
4.5.

CONTENT SHARING

The national digital content repository, Agrega2

(agrega.educacion.es), compiles content from repositories from each Autonomous Community. The
Spanish Ministry of Education is also associated with
the European LRE3.
Moreover, the project Plan de Cultura Digital en la Escuela that is being devised by the National Institute for
Educational Technologies and Teacher Training of the
Ministry of Education includes a work line related to interoperability and standards. One of the aims of this line

agrega.educacion.es

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The latest tool whose use is being promoted by the Ministry of Education and several Autonomous Communities for the creation of new resources is eXeLearning
(exelearning.net). The original project of this tool was
developed in New Zealand and it has recently been developed by the Spanish Ministry of Education in collaboration with several Autonomous Communities and
other organisations. eXeLearning is an Open Source
authoring application to assist teachers and academics
in the creation and publishing of educational content,
without the need to be an expert in HTML or XML. Resources authored in eXe include multimedia materials,
self-evaluation interactive activities, etc., that can be exported as IMS Content Package, SCORM 1.2, or IMS
Common Cartridge formats or as simple self-contained
web pages.

WEB 2.0

is to establish standards related to exchange protocols

and formats of the digital educational contents, so that
it is easier to share them both within the country and
with other countries.
4.6.

LEARNING PLATFORMS

Moodle is widely used for online teacher training and a

growing number of schools have also adopted it for their
own purposes.
Most Autonomous Communities provide their teachers
and schools with a virtual learning environment (VLE) to
which they can upload resources and share them with
their students. These VLEs are hosted centrally, not in
the schools, and are often custom-made by software
companies. This has proven to be the most successful
VLE solution, since the systems are centrally administered and schools therefore do not have to devote their
own resources (people and machines) for their maintenance. Regional support is also given to schools in order to have their own portal and intranet; in these cases,
central servers host the school website, which the
school manages through a pre-installed content management system.
One of the objectives of the Ministry of Education
through its Plan de Cultura Digital en la Escuela is to
establish standards for the platforms used by the different Autonomous Communities in the educational field
so that educational contents can be used in any VLE by
teachers in all the Communities.
ACCESS OF SEN STUDENTS

Various efforts have been made in previous years to

provide schools and students with digital devices to ensure that learners with disabilities have access to technology, thus favouring their integration. This has included digital classrooms, IWBs and netbooks (mainly
for students in 5th and 6th year of primary education).
Moreover, teachers can access learning resources for
students with special needs in repositories administered
by the Ministry of Education (Agrega2) and in the repositories of the Autonomous Communities.

5. TEACHER EDUCATION FO R ICT

5.1.
TION

ICT IN INIT IAL TEACHER EDUCA-

ICT is compulsory in initial teacher education. Primary

teachers must take at least a one-semester subject covering ICT in Education. Secondary school teachers
must take a specific masters in secondary education,
part of which covers the integration of ICT in the teaching of their subject of expertise.
Initial teacher training tends to be a mixture of a theoretical and hands-on approach that tries to enable future
teachers to use ICT in their classrooms as well as to
reflect upon and investigate them.
5.2.
ICT IN IN-SERVICE TEACHER EDUCATION
ICT in in-service teacher education is not compulsory.
Nevertheless, there is a reasonable offer of ICT teacher
training courses both at national and regional level,
which is positively welcomed by in-service teachers.
Teachers sign up for those courses offered by educational authorities (online or face-to-face) according to
their preferences and/or needs. See also Section 5.4.
5.3.

NEW INITIATIVES

Besides the formal online courses through which teachers receive certification for participation, one of the social networks of teachers supported by the Ministry (internetaula.ning.com) organises different training activities:

Learning workshops in which an expert

designs a short course that includes a set of
activities on a certain topic, using a

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4.7.

The Ministry of Education includes among its priorities

the need to use ICT in order to adapt to the different
abilities and conditions of each student, which includes
using them to adapt learning for students with disabilities or special needs. See also Section 5.7.

methodology that tries to encourage peer-topeer learning. Registration is required for these
workshops (between 200 and 500 teachers
register). The workshops run for just a few
weeks and no certification is given.

cess training materials from other Autonomous Communities. Finally, attempts will be made to develop a
shared system for the recognition of teachers acquisition of ICT competences.

Webinars featuring a chat session in which an

expert answers questions from teachers
(around 50) that register for the event.

5.5.

The subjects of these workshops and webinars are chosen by members of the network and by groups with a
common interest within the network, in cooperation with
Ministry staff. Subjects are mostly focused on the use of
ICT, particularly the presence of web 2.0 in school; they
sometimes address the use of a particular tool (e.g. podcasting in education, social networks in education, etc.).
5.4.

ASSESSMENT SCHEMES

There is no specific nationwide accreditation scheme,

such as ECDL, for teachers ICT competence. Teachers
are certified on a course-by-course basis according to
the number of hours devoted to them. Courses need to
be certified by the regional authorities to be taken into
account in the teachers professional records and they
are mainly taken outside school time and online. A
teacher is required to take a minimum of number of
hours (100 to 250 hours depending on the Autonomous
Community) every six years in order to obtain a salary
increase. These courses do not have to focus on ICT,
but can be related to any aspect of Education. Nevertheless, the offer of ICT courses (especially online),
tends to outnumber the offer of non-ICT related courses.

In-service training courses are mainly taught by expert

teachers and occasionally by university lecturers. Initial
training at universities is taught by lecturers in this area
of expertise whose academic interests include the role
of ICT in education.
The Ministry of Education and most Autonomous Communities offer courses (mainly online) for teachers to become tutors in teacher training courses. This training
course is compulsory for future tutors of online courses
offered by the Ministry of Education.
5.6.

INCENTIVES

There is a national contest for the creation of Digital Educational materials (see Section 4.3), which includes
different categories that recognise individuals as well as
schools as a whole.
The Ministry and Autonomous Communities take relevant actions in order to give visibility to the best projects
and teachers using ICT at school. These innovative projects are labelled as Buena Prctica 2.0 in order to disseminate best practices as models for other colleagues.
See also Section 5.4. Salary incentives.

On the other hand, some Autonomous Communities

have recently explored schemas for the assessment
and accreditation of teachers acquisition of ICT competences. Thus, in the Ministry of Educations Plan de
Cultura Digital en la Escuela one of the objectives is
the elaboration and agreement with the Autonomous
Communities of a common model of development of
teachers ICT competences at all dimensions and levels, which would be valid both for initial and in-service
ICT training. A common site for quality training resources will also be created, on which teachers can ac-

TRAINING OF TEACHER TRAINERS

5.7.

ICT SUPPORTING INCLUSION

The Ministry of Education offers an online course that

addresses the issue of students with attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): tinyurl.com/cvgjt7l
Materials from previous courses related to students
inclusion are also available for teachers. Course
materials are available to all, both teachers and the
public, whether they enrol the course or not:

SEN students: tinyurl.com/3bdykde

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Inclusive education from a broad perspective:

tinyurl.com/3z72f9l

The Ministry has also developed materials on the subject of reading and writing for students with special educational needs; this content can be freely accessed at
proyectos.cnice.mec.es/ales2
Among the different actions undertaken by the Autonomous Communities, the project developed by the Autonomous Community of Aragn, which focused on
augmentative
and
alternative
communication
(www.catedu.es/arasaac), is of particular relevance
and has grown to become an international reference for
its useful materials and tools (see also Section 4.7).

Publisher: European Schoolnet (EUN)

Author: Carlos J. Medina, Ministerio de
Educacin
Editor: Anja Balanskat, Katja
Engelhardt (European Schoolnet)
Coordinator: Anja Balanskat (European
Schoolnet)

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