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In March of last year, the Technical Advisory Committee of the University Access System decided to replace the PSU with a new university admission test that, according to the schedule, will debut at the end of 2022 . The idea? Move the focus of measurement from memorized content to competencies, with a view to prioritizing student aptitudes in their application for admission to higher education.
In the meantime, a two-year transition process began, in which a new modality of questions and content began to be launched. And the evaluations of the filmmakers, so far, are positive.
"As we announced at the time, we wanted to go through this path of changes in the admission tests gradually , to monitor the effect of the changes made," says Juan Eduardo Vargas, Undersecretary of Higher Education.
In this transition period and in line with what is to come, a reduction in content and a new alignment with the school curriculum have already been considered, integrating a growing proportion of the so-called “new type” questions .
These are intended to assess the necessary skills for a good university performance and try to be closer to the different experiences of the applicants, with a more everyday language and more adjusted to the needs of the universities that will host them . These types of questions, they say from the Undersecretary of Higher Education, will be "the heart" of the new admission tests.
For this reason, they add, the learning opportunities that young people have truly had have been considered, avoiding topics where there is no certainty that they have been taught to the students. And although this reduces the content to be considered, the same connoisseurs assert that it is not an easier test, but a more modern and higher quality one.
“The new tests will assess competencies, that is, both knowledge and know-how, integrating knowledge and skills. The central objective of this and the other changes is to have tests of higher quality, more pertinent, equitable and fair , in accordance with the changes in the access system, inspired by increasing flexibility to welcome greater diversity and increase the equity of the university admission”, says Leonor Varas, director of Demre, the technical body in charge of building the tests.
The transition
To understand the process that will culminate in the new tests, it is necessary to review the current transition phase, which already sheds light on the future. In fact, the last test that was given in the first days of December, as well as the one that will take place next winter (the last of the transition) have much more of the new test than of the old University Selection Test, PSU .
The first version of the PDT (Transition Test, from the end of 2020) has already reduced the number of questions in the mandatory tests (Mathematics and Language) from 80 to 65 and replaced 25% of the PSU questions with those of the new type.
On that occasion, according to the Education authorities, the results showed a promising reduction in the score gaps, mainly between students from public and private establishments. Thus, while in 2020 graduates from paid private schools obtained 119 points more than students from municipal establishments in Language, in the first year of the PDT the difference fell to 106 , that is, it was reduced by 13 points. In the same period, the gap in Mathematics fell from 131 to 129, in Science it fell from 130 to 127 , and in History it went from 119 to 113 .
More notorious was what happened between scientific-humanist and technical-professional schools, where in Reading Comprehension the difference was shortened by 14 points (95 to 81) , while in Mathematics it was reduced by eight (from 88 to 80) .
Thus, in order to continue advancing, in the recently applied test, the new type of questions covered 50% of the questionnaire . But it was not the only thing, since the number of topics in the elective test of History and Social Sciences was also reduced and with it the number of questions, which also went from 80 to 65 . In addition, in the Science test, although the 80 questions were maintained, in the common module the requirement for scientific skills increased , which points to knowledge about science and how it is done.
In this last test, the number of questions cannot be reduced, since it consists of two parts: one common and one elective. Thus, the common part is transitioning to a transversal and fundamental test, and the elective is biology, physics or chemistry, with third and fourth grade questions.
More changes
The new format of the admission test, it is said, will debut at the end of next year. In this, the two mandatory tests will contain 100% of the new type of questions and will be aligned with the curriculum from seventh grade to second grade .
“We hope that the increase in the number of 'new type' questions will follow the path of narrowing the gaps observed in the first applied Transition Test, but we believe, in any case, that implementing the changes gradually is the most prudent, especially in the current context,” says Undersecretary Vargas.
The new Mathematics elective test will also debut , which will be aimed mainly at careers that require a deeper development of this type of skills for their university education. The details of this test are expected to be announced during the second half of January 2022.
Experts' view
What do those who have been following the process say about it?
For Gonzalo Muñoz, an academic at the U. Diego Portales and former head of the General Education Division of the Ministry of Education, " the evidence we have is insufficient to conclude whether the Transition Test is better than the previous one ." In fact, he points out that "several additional applications of the changes that have been made to the test are needed to know if this new evaluation brings fairness to the admissions process, a central question given the inequality of our system."
From Education 2020, Alejandra Arratia, executive director of the organization, says that she values the spirit of the changes, "which have been moving towards somehow reducing the biases that the test may have in terms of equity ." It also appreciates that the number of questions has been reduced, that progress has been made in those with more competencies, that it can be given twice a year, that the special admission quotas continue to increase and that the specific weight of the test has been reduced. "because it allows expanding the sources of information that allow reporting how the educational trajectory of a young person has been."
Likewise, Ana Luz Durán, dean of the Faculty of Education at San Sebastián University, recalls that when the old PAA ended and the PSU was given way, the discussion was to move from skills to content “and today we are returning to that point back, basically, because you want to move towards the development of greater skills in terms of writing, analysis and basic mathematics, diminishing the importance of the content”. For this reason, she believes it is vital to “ redo the definitions to update university entrance tests, because generations and admission profiles are changing ”.
For her part, Ruth Arce, director of Pedagogy in Secondary Education at U. Diego Portales, says that the PSU, from its inception, showed that it did not reflect what students learned in the school system, while “ the PDT already it was an important step forward to test some questions and make the admission system more in line with reality .” This, because, as he has seen, the new test "gradually leaves behind the content itself, the hard one, and begins to work more on the need for students to demonstrate transversal skills, that is, not only show that I know content , but I know how to handle it and apply it”.
As for the challenges to come, Muñoz states that one of the main challenges of the new test "will be to sustain over time the prioritization of content that was already done in the transition test and that will continue to be essential in the post-pandemic context," although , in any case, and beyond continuing to improve the instrument, the academic thinks that the underlying discussion "remains on how to move towards a much more comprehensive admissions system, which considers, for example, access quotas for vulnerable students and a expansion of the logic of student accompaniment programs”.
Dean Durán, meanwhile, believes it is necessary for higher education institutions to be given the opportunity to have their own admission systems: “A percentage for diverse talents, which makes it possible for them to have their own access systems complementary to the centralized , because it is important to collect the diversity of profiles, not only socioeconomic, but also the diversity of the territories”. This, she assures her, would above all benefit the universities in the extreme areas.
Likewise, director Arce believes that an instrument "is never definitive", because generations and needs are changing, and that this same definitive test that is coming, will also " have to be evaluated, just like the PSU ". But her, she adds, “you don't have to focus only on the test itself, but on the general system, considering, for example, that school grades have greater value or that there are more special admission tests.