Country Digital Education Ecosystems and Governance

A Companion to Digital Education Outlook 2023

Report

13 December 2023

26. Spain

Abstract

This note provides an overview of Spain’s digital education ecosystem, including the digital tools for system and institutional management and digital resources for teaching and learning that are publicly provided to schools and educational stakeholders. The note outlines how public responsibilities for the governance of digital education are divided and examines how Spain supports the equitable and effective access to and use of digital technology and data in education. This includes through practices and policies on procurement, interoperability, data privacy and regulation, and digital competencies. Finally, the note discusses how Spain engages in any initiatives, including with the EdTech sector, to drive innovation and research and development towards an effective digital ecosystem.

Key features

In Spain, the responsibility for providing digital infrastructure in education is largely decentralised and devolved to the governments of the autonomous communities – although the central ministry remains responsible for the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla. In general, the relevant governing authority publicly provides digital tools for system and institutional management for schools within their jurisdiction, including a student information system, an admission management system and a learning management system. There is no centralised student information system or student register in the country.
The central ministry, via the National Institute of Educational Technologies and Teacher Training, publicly provides significant digital resources to support teaching and learning that schools and teachers across all the autonomous communities can access (in addition to those provided by the educational authorities at lower levels of government).
The National Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, financed by the EU and implemented since 2021, includes several projects focused on the digital transformation of education. Several governments of the autonomous communities have also elaborated their own regional digital education strategies and initiatives.
Due to the highly devolved nature of governance, ensuring the equity of access and use of digital infrastructure, tools and resources across schools is a challenge. However, most autonomous communities provide a minimum digital infrastructure that includes tools for system and institutional management, and the central government provides significant open educational resources to support teaching and learning. National initiatives also aim to connect all schools to high-speed Internet and to provide access to digital devices to vulnerable student groups.
At the central level, the ministry provides significant resources to support teachers in using digital tools and resources in education and in developing teachers’ digital competencies, including information resources, practical guidelines and open online courses. In 2022, the ministry published an updated framework for certifying in-service teachers’ digital competencies. Each autonomous region has adopted the framework and committed to certifying the digital proficiency level of at least 80% of in-service primary and secondary teachers before the end of 2025.
Spain has general rules on data protection and privacy, but further rules related to the access to educational data and uses of digital technologies in education are the prerogative of the governments of the autonomous communities. While the ministry promotes interoperability of its own publicly provided digital tools in addition to developing a national standard taxonomy of digital educational content, there are no national rules on the use of open or technical standards.

General policy context

Division of responsibility

In Spain, the governance of the education system is shared between the national government and that of each of the country’s autonomous communities (political and administrative regions with the right to self-government, within the limits set forth in the Spanish constitution; hereafter “regions”). The national Ministry of Education and Vocational Training (Ministerio de Educación y Formación Profesional; hereafter “the ministry”) defines compulsory education subjects and their assessment criteria at all education levels across the country, as well as academic and vocational qualifications. It is also directly responsible for governing the education system in the autonomous cities of Melilla and Ceuta (cities with the right to become autonomous communities but that have not exercised this right). Some of the regions offer different linguistic teaching models (those that have their own officially recognised languages), and all are responsible for the allocation and distribution of funding on education within their regions. Schools in Spain have some autonomy, but schooling decisions are mostly decided by the regional governments.

Responsibilities for providing access to and supporting the use of digital technologies in public and government-dependent schools largely follows this devolved context, although the ministry directly provides tools for system and institutional management for the two autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla. Schools can also acquire additional digital tools and resources.

Digital education strategy

The “Educate in Digital” national initiative (Educa en Digital), established in 2020 as a partnership between the ministry, the Ministry of Business and Digital Transformation, and RED.es (an agency in charge of multi-sectoral digital projects), was created in response to the COVID-19 crisis and focuses on improving access to hardware and digital services for vulnerable students.1 Over half a million digital devices have been provided to schools to loan to students in need; the provision of digital devices and improving connectivity will continue to be national policy priorities in the coming years. Other components of the initiative focus on supporting teachers to deliver digital education and building AI-powered platforms to facilitate personalised learning (although work towards this latter goal has not yet started).

The “National Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan” (Plan de Recuperación, Transformación y Resiliencia; hereafter the “Recovery and Resilience Plan”), introduced in 2021 and financed by the EU, is a more general national transformation strategy but focuses some actions specifically on digital education. These include implementing a comprehensive national plan for digital skills and certifying in-service teachers’ digital skills, furthering the provision of portable devices to marginalised student groups, improving access to digital tools and teacher training in vocational education, and advancing the digitalisation of the education system at all levels (including pre-primary) through curriculum reform and upgrading digital infrastructure (equipment and resources).2 These actions have also formally been articulated within a national digital education and digital competency strategy by the ministry (“Plan #DigEdu”), although their implementation is primarily the responsibility of the regions. Some regions (e.g. Galicia, Extremadura, Aragón, Canary Islands) have also further elaborated their own digital education strategies building on the national “Plan #DigEdu”.3

The public digital education infrastructure

This section reviews two aspects of the public digital infrastructure: digital tools for system and institutional management, and digital learning resources for teaching and learning. In Spain, the regions are generally responsible for providing public system and institutional management tools, but the ministry and other national agencies publicly provide significant resources for teaching and learning. While schools must use some of the system and institutional management tools that are publicly provided, they can also acquire their own digital tools and resources.

Digital ecosystem for system and school management

Student information system and institutional management system

The National Institute of Educational Technologies and Teacher Training (INTEF; Instituto Nacional de Tecnologías Educativas y de Formación del Profesorado), an agency of the national ministry, provides a comprehensive, multi-functional system called Alborán to public and government-dependent schools at all educational levels in the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla. Alborán includes several institutional management and resource planning functionalities: school administrators use it to update their school details including specifying the school subjects and courses offered in different years as well as the evaluations associated with each course, to manage teacher information and assign them to courses, and to create class groups and timetables. Teachers have profiles within the system where they can manage information about their professional background, access information about their classes and schedule, and also assign grades to students in their classes. Alborán also enables some customer relationship management functionalities: for example, parents, guardians and students can access some of the information that is stored in Alborán, such as student grades (teacher awarded and final grades in each subject), attendance and registration data, via the Sede Electronica portal of the ministry by using their ID number.4 In addition, Alborán effectively functions as a student information system (SIS) in the education systems of Ceuta and Melilla, given it stores student information (e.g. name and identity documentation, age, address, class group) and facilitates the transfer of student data to the ministry.

For the rest of the country, there is no nationally provided SIS that integrates student information from across the regions in Spain. To compute national statistics on education, the ministry periodically communicates with and receives data from regional governments but there is no national student database where all student data from across the country is collected and where students have unique identifiers. However, within the cities of Ceuta and Melilla, Alborán does provide students with a unique and longitudinal student identifier meaning those students can be tracked across educational levels so long as they remain enrolled in schools within those territories; students can also be linked with their teachers in the Alborán system. Each autonomous community has its own equivalent multi-functional system that the regional ministry publicly provides to schools (including private schools in some regions), although the exact functionalities of each system may vary across regions depending on the solution provided. Examples of similar tools include Seneca (Andalucía) or Pincel Ekade (Canary Islands).5 In the case that a student transfers from one region to another, their student information cannot be transferred digitally and must be re-entered manually in their new region.

Learning management systems

All schools are publicly provided with a learning management system (LMS). Currently all regions (and the national ministry for Ceuta and Melilla) provide Moodle as their official LMS platform, which provides both a learning and content repository and communication tools between students and teachers. However, the exact customisation and use of the platforms may vary from region to region. In Ceuta and Melilla, the Moodle and Alborán systems are interoperable meaning that teachers can create student classes in Moodle based on the data stored in Alborán; similar interoperability exists between the equivalent tools provided in most regions. In some regions, other commercial LMS tools may additionally be procured by the regional government and offered to schools. For example, in Extremadura, the regional government provides all schools with the Rayuela platform (a commercial solution) that also integrates eScholarium, an online tool to facilitate online teaching and learning, through a single sign-on service.6 However, commercial LMS tools (procured by regions or by schools independently) may not be interoperable with the other publicly provided digital tools or resources for teaching and learning.

Other management systems

Across Spain, student admission management systems are publicly provided by the relevant governing ministry to manage the allocation of students to schools, but the tools vary across regions. In Ceuta and Melilla, parents apply for a place for their child in one or more schools via the ministry’s Sede Eletronica portal. Schools also access the portal to transfer the data to Alborán and carry out the admission of prospective students.

Similarly, various administrative management systems are publicly provided across regions. For example, in the Canary Islands, the regional ministry provides the APP Docente system to facilitate teacher administrative and management functions, as well as communication between teachers and their institution. In Aragón, the regional ministry provides the PADDOC platform for teacher management.7

The national ministry also publicly provides a knowledge management system called AbiesWeb that schools can use to manage their library funds and resources, in conjunction with the relevant regional authority. For example, in Extremadura, the regional ministry has created its own version of the tool called ABIEX. These library management tools can be used by teachers, students and administrative staff.8

Digital ecosystem for teaching and learning

(Open) educational resource repositories

The ministry, along with the National Institute of Educational Technologies and Teacher Training (INTEF), provides various educational resource repositories to support teaching and learning at all education levels. The Procomún and Agrega platforms are essentially repositories of static and interactive digital resources created by the ministry, its agencies or those of the regional communities.9 All content on the platforms are mapped to the relevant curricular area at different educational levels, according to a national standard taxonomy (LOM-ES), and both platforms include digital resources related to the whole curriculum (i.e. not only “core” subjects); Procomún also includes some cross-curricular resources that target the development of transversal skills (e.g. civic, intercultural or environmental educational resources) as well as those targeted for students with special educational needs. Content from both platforms can be downloaded and easily integrated into the Moodle-based LMS tools publicly provided to schools.

Although the resources in Procomún can only be accessed by teachers, who must register to use the platform, it additionally provides educators with information about creating digital content and serves as a professional networking platform. Educators can create their own profiles, join particular educational communities, and create, provide feedback on and share educational content of their own with others. The INTEF website also has its own dedicated section that was initially created during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide digital materials for online teaching and learning, including educational video content, (external) educational applications and lesson plans with integrated interactive resources.10

The ministry also promotes the creation of open educational resources (OER). The ministry, INTEF and the regional ministry in Extremadura have created the National Centre for Curriculum Development in Non-Proprietary Systems (Centro Nacional de Desarollo Curricular en Sistemas No Propietarias) whose aim is to promote the design and development of digital resources using free, open-source software. It does so via two main components: the EDIA project and the eXeLearning tool.11 EDIA is another repository with digital resources mapped to the curriculum for all educational levels, as well as to the type of pedagogical approach (e.g. game-based or project-based learning). The eXeLearning tool is a free and open-source application developed by the ministry that facilitates the creation of digital educational content. The tool can handle a wide range of media types and interactive activities, creates content that has multi-device compatibility (e.g. computer, tablet, mobile), and allows creators to export and publish content in a range of formats.

Some autonomous communities have their own initiatives to promote the creation and use of OER. For example, in Extremadura, the “Programa CREA” supports teachers to use, adapt and create digital OER within the publicly provided eScholarium LMS platform.12 Similarly to the Procomún and Agrega platforms, the digital resources created by teachers as part of the Programa CREA are mapped to the curriculum and different educational levels.

Other open access digital resources

Since 1992, the ministry has partnered with Radio Televisión Española (RTVE), the national broadcaster, to provide daily TV education on a range of topics for students in primary and secondary school.13 Aired episodes can be freely accessed and viewed at any time from the RTVE website. The ministry and INTEF also provide updates, information and resources targeted at educators about various initiatives through their social media channels (as do some of the regional ministries).14

The ministry and INTEF also provide a range of Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) via the platform aprendeINTEF.15 Most of the courses focus on developing digital skills, implementing pedagogies using digital tools or designing digital learning resources, but not all of them have an explicit digital component (e.g. courses on education for equality or developing global competence skills). Anyone can access the courses, but the majority are targeted at teachers; as such, it effectively functions as a platform for teacher development. Twice a year, teachers can also apply to participate in online tutored courses lasting two months, after which participants earn digital micro-credential badges that they can store, export and share via their social networks. Some regional governments may also provide their own platforms for teacher development, for example the Doceo platform in Aragón.16

Platform for student distance learning and online tutoring

The ministry has established the Integrated Centre for Distance Regulated Education (CIERD; Centro Integrado de Enseñanzas Regladas a Distancia) which provides a specialised Moodle platform for distance learning for students unable to continue their education in person (e.g. students residing temporarily outside of Spain).17 The platform enables the full delivery of the curriculum at primary and lower secondary education level, as well as some components of upper secondary education and VET, using materials designed by teachers specialised in distance education. Students mainly complete activities asynchronously and send them periodically for evaluation by teachers, but students can also benefit from real-time mentoring from tutors; however, the platform does not deliver online examinations (these must be done in person).

Innovative classrooms

INTEF, in collaboration with regional governments and industry partners, coordinates the Aulas del Futuro initiative (“Future Classroom Lab”) in Spain. The “Future Classroom Lab” is a project led by the European Schoolnet network and translated into national contexts in 15 countries by local education stakeholders. The goal of the project is to create and promote flexible and easily reconfigurable classroom spaces and foster teaching and learning through active methodologies using digital technology.18 The project proposes to divide classrooms into six “zones” – Investigate, Explore, Interact, Develop, Create, and Present – that foster student-centred pedagogies. With this model, INTEF and regional educational authorities are creating a network of 20 Aulas del Futuro for teacher training and professional development across the country. Each of the zones include different tools and technologies to support learning activities, including digital whiteboards, tablets, virtual reality headsets, portable recording devices, and materials to facilitate research and computational thinking. Teachers can also find dedicated resources on innovative methodologies including modifiable activity plans and testimonials on the Aulas del Futuro website. Some regions have launched their own initiatives to support schools that want to create their own adapted Aula del Futuro with their own resources, including providing support via the network of regional collaborators called Embajadores AdF (Future Classroom Lab Ambassadors).

Access, use and governance of digital technologies and data in education

Providing some kind of public digital education infrastructure does not necessarily imply that stakeholders will use it. Different rules and policies can therefore ensure access to digital technologies in education, as well as support and govern their use.

Ensuring access and supporting use

Equity of access

In Spain, students’ rights to digital education in general are enshrined in law.19 As the responsibility for education in Spain is decentralised and devolved to the autonomous communities, there are inevitably differences in terms of the specific digital hardware, management tools and resources publicly provided across the country. There is also little by way of centralised rules to ensure an equitable provision and use of digital infrastructure across regions, although the national ministry provides general strategic guidelines on the equitable access to and use of digital technologies in education (as do some regional ministries).20 That being said, the central ministry and INTEF do provide significant digital resources for teaching and learning that are openly accessible, and most regions provide, at a minimum, similar system and institutional management tools to those publicly provided by the ministry in Ceuta and Melilla (e.g. an SIS, LMS, KMS and admission management system). Of the various tools and resources publicly provided by relevant authorities in the country, only the SIS and admission management systems in each region are provided as a minimum and mandatory for public schools to use (although there is no law stipulating the minimal provision and use of digital tools).

At the school level, schools can use non-earmarked, operational funding provided by their governing authority (which decides the allocation and distribution of funding autonomously) for expenditure related to ICT, inevitably leading to disparities and inequities in access and use of digital technologies across institutions and regions. Procurement practices also differ across the country for schools that wish to acquire additional digital tools or resources. For example, schools in Ceuta and Melilla must enter into a public procurement process and obtain approval from the national ministry to procure digital tools (although the ministry does not impose criteria on or provide guidelines to support procurement). In other regions, for example the community of Valencia, the regional government mandates another organisation to carry out procurement and it provides a list of pre-authorised tools. Some regions also impose specific criteria or provide further procurement guidance.

In general, students and institutions from low socio-economic backgrounds as well as rural institutions are considered priority groups in Spain’s digital education policy and the ministry does address equity of access to digital infrastructure to those groups through some targeted actions. For example, since 2015, the national Escuelas Conectadas initiative (led by RED.es and in collaboration with several ministries) has focused on providing all schools with high-speed Internet; as of January 2023, the initiative had reached 100% of public schools in 12 of the 17 regions (and both autonomous cities).21 Since 2020, the “Educate in Digital” initiative has also provided digital devices to schools to loan to vulnerable student groups. When distributing funding to the regions to implement the Escuelas Conectadas initiative, information related to these priority groups is taken into account (e.g. the proportion of students from low socio-economic backgrounds in a particular region).

Supporting the use of digital tools and resources

The aprendeINTEF platform provides a wide range of professional learning and development courses that are publicly available to all teachers in the country, including on how to use the teaching and learning resources publicly provided by INTEF. INTEF also provides specific online or face-to-face trainings to teachers in the cities of Ceuta and Melilla on how to use the digital tools for system and institutional management provided by the national ministry (e.g. Alborán). Some regional ministries also offer support such as dedicated guides or professional learning courses related to their own publicly provided digital tools or resources. For example, as part of the “Programa CREA” implemented in Extremadura, teachers can find guidelines, access trainings, and receive personalised support from staff at the regional ministry on how to design and use OER in their classrooms.

In general, most of the initiatives coordinated by INTEF that relate to digital teaching and learning resources provide educators with dedicated guidance and support. For example, the Aulas del Futuro (Future Classroom Lab) initiative integrates several support measures including: 1) at least one “ambassador” within each region that teachers in participating schools can contact for advice and support; 2) an interactive map with information about other participating schools and their specific projects; 3) dedicated trainings for teachers, provided by INTEF or the relevant regional body; and 4) guidelines and resources for different stakeholders (e.g. teachers, school leaders and policy makers) to facilitate the implementation of the project.

Beyond providing trainings on specific digital tools, resources or initiatives, the INTEF website provides more general information resources to teachers to support their use of digital tools. For example, the “Educational Technology Observatory” (Observatorio de tecnología educativa) is a website with articles written by teachers for their peers on new educational technologies.22 The ConectaTIC platform is a dedicated support space that provides concrete and practical resources for educators related to digital education, as well as a space for peer support.23

In terms of system-level support, legislation enacted in 2020 stipulated that each school in Spain must elaborate a Digital School Plan detailing the school’s strategy and actions related to digitalisation – both in terms of its use of digital tools for teaching and learning, and to facilitate school management processes.24 The plan is updated annually and must take stock of the current digitalisation of the school (using the EU’s SELFIE self-evaluation tool for schools), outline digitalisation objectives and a roadmap of concrete actions to achieve them.

Some regions have also developed their own system-level support networks. For example, in Aragón, the ministry coordinates a network of teacher champions called “digital mentors” to support schools with developing their digital school plans and to support their teacher peers in developing their digital competencies.25 Similarly in Ceuta and Melilla, dedicated technical teacher advisor roles have been created to provide guidance to teachers and school leaders on digitalisation.

Finally, to facilitate in-person peer-learning across the different education systems within the country, the national ministry coordinates and convenes a working group with representatives from all of the regions several times a year to exchange information and best practices related to digital education and resources.

Cultivating the digital literacy of education stakeholders

Spain has a national digital skills plan, which explicitly refers to developing the digital skills of both teachers and students.26 The country has had basic rules about the development of teachers’ digital competencies as part of their pre-service training for all education levels since 2007 and universities must develop teacher training qualifications in accordance with these basic standards. In 2022, as a result of collaborative work of all educational administrations in Spain, the ministry published an updated Spanish Framework for the Digital Competence of Teachers, connected to the European DigCompEdu Framework, which establishes proficiency levels for teacher digital competence in a similar way to the ones in the European Union’s language competency framework (e.g. proficiency levels ranging from A1 through to C2).27 Each region in the country has adopted the framework and has committed to certifying the digital proficiency level of at least 80% of in-service primary and secondary teachers before the end of 2025. Each regional ministry is responsible for defining and implementing its own certification process according to their different context and resources, but this must be based on a set of common procedures with specific requirements for certifying teachers at each proficiency level and certifications issued by each regional authority are recognised nationally.

As already discussed, INTEF provides significant professional learning and development resources to teachers focused on developing their digital competencies, notably through its open online courses on the aprendeINTEF platform. As a further complement, it has also developed a micro-learning app called EduPills, accessible by tablet or mobile device, dedicated to developing teacher digital competencies.28 Some of the regional ministries additionally stipulate their own guidelines, publicly provide platforms and online courses for teacher training, or implement specific initiatives to foster the development of teacher digital literacy. For example, the ministry of education in Aragón has developed its own teacher digital competency strategy and established specific roles (digital mentor and tutors) to support teacher training and accreditation.29 Once certified, data is stored in the region’s teacher management platform, PADDOC, which recommends further training courses and materials to teachers via the region’s teacher training platform Doceo. Elsewhere, the government of the Canary Islands has its own guidelines on teacher professional standards (including digital competencies) and provides a dedicated teacher training platform on digital education with various resources enabling teachers to access training modules, technical support and gain accreditation of their digital competencies.30

Spain also has rules related to the development of students’ digital competencies in primary and secondary education, with digital competencies being seen as a key student learning outcome. For VET education, the content of the basic curriculum is defined according to the specific vocation studied. Basic digital competence is nonetheless considered to be an outcome of any VET programme.31 To support the development of students’ competencies, INTEF collaborates with the regional ministries to implement the “School of computational thinking and artificial intelligence” project, which offers educational resources on programming and robotics for teachers to integrate in various subject areas; the Code.INTEF website also offers similar resources.32

Governance of data and digital technologies in education

Data protection and privacy

In Spain, general rules on data protection and privacy are provided for under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), translated into national rules that also reference data protection in the context of education specifically (see Organic Law 3/2018). To support teachers with the responsible use of technologies in their classrooms, the national ministry, INTEF and the national data protection agency provide resources and guidelines on data protection, digital proctoring and security and the use of digital technologies by minors via the AseguraTIC website.33 Any further rules or guidelines concerning the access to or specific uses of technologies in classrooms, if they exist, are the prerogative of the regional governments.

There are no national rules or provisions governing the equal access to educational data for public and private research. Some educational data are publicly documented and available at the regional level: for example, data about students, teachers and schools are publicly available in the Canary Islands via an open data portal.34 As above, rules or guidelines on the access to and use of educational data may vary depending on the region.

Similarly, there are no national rules or guidelines concerning the use of algorithmic models, the monitoring of algorithmic bias, or the explanation or interpretability of algorithmic-based decisions. While no public digital tools or teaching or learning resources provided at the national level currently use AI-based algorithms, the ministry has signalled that the development of analytics dashboards and platforms to facilitate personalised learning through AI applications are a development priority.

Interoperability and open standards

Although there are no explicit national rules or guidelines on data standards or the interoperability of educational technologies, the ministry nonetheless promotes interoperability across its publicly provided digital systems. For example, the mandatory system and institutional management tools it provides (e.g. Alborán, Moodle) are interoperable, and most of the digital teaching and learning resources created in the various OER repositories can be integrated within the Moodle LMS publicly provided across regions (and potentially others). The promotion of the eXeLearning authoring tool to create OER, as well as the development of a national standard taxonomy of digital educational content (LOM-ES), also aims to facilitate interoperability of digital resources. INTEF provides guidelines on the use and application of the LOM-ES certification.35 Some regions may impose further rules on the use of specific open and technical standards for digital solutions in their jurisdiction.

Supporting innovation, research and development (R&D) in digital education

There are no formally articulated national public research objectives on digital education in Spain, nor is there a specific funding programme dedicated to researching issues related to digital education. However, the ministry does occasionally contract and publish some research on topics related to digital education in the context of the various initiatives that it (or INTEF) coordinates. For example, recent research papers address the use of technologies to support teaching, improve learning outcomes and improve student engagement.36

The ministry does directly engage in the development of some of the digital tools that it publicly provides to schools for system management (e.g. Alborán, AbiesWeb), and INTEF does the same for some of the digital resources for teaching and learning that are publicly provided via various OER repositories (e.g. ProComún). Teachers voluntarily engage in the development of additional open educational resources made available through these platforms, but the ministry does not formally incentivise this engagement through monetary or other means. Sometimes external organisations or individuals are engaged to produce digital resources, but this is done via a contractual arrangement with the ministry.

Likewise, the ministry does not formally incentivise or invest in the research and development of EdTech solutions. However, it does support collaboration between EdTech companies and educational institutions through non-monetary means, for example through organising conferences. Some regional authorities may have their own processes for incentivising or investing in the development of EdTech.