New challenges for education in Spainanalysis of the relevance of the inclusion of the economy and business in education curriculum design

Resumen

According to the PISA Financial Competence Report (2012), which evaluated the financial competence of 18 countries, the 84.2% of Spanish students did not have an adequate financial culture since this subject was not included in the curriculum and learning in the classroom, compared to 48.2% in average of the OCDE. Spain was the country with the worst rating in this financial education report. Due to this, the aim of this paper is to analyze the inclusion of new subjects and competences of the economic-business field in the curricular design in the compulsory and post-compulsory educational stages in Spain, as well as the impact that these modifications have had on the number of registrations in the social and legal sciences modality and the number of teachers needed to attend to this new educational reality. In this paper, the methodology consists of an exhaustive analysis of the current educational legislation in Spain (LOMCE, 2013), analyzing the inclusion of economic and financial concepts in the compulsory stage (Primary and Secondary Education) and postcompulsory (Advanced levels and vocational training) after the approval of the new educational legislation in Spain. The results of this analysis show that there has been greater inclusion in the curricular design of economic education. However, the level of financial competence of students in compulsory and post-compulsory education stages in most of the countries of Europe, and in Spain in particular, remains a pending challenge (due to the fact that according to the PISA 2015 report, Spain is below the average in financial competition).