This publication brings together the winning entries in the twenty-fourth edition of the Francisco Giner de los Ríos Awards for Improvements in Educational Quality, called jointly by the Ministry of Education and the BBVA Foundation.

The special award in this year’s edition went to a project in the Language and Literature area in which pupils are invited to write about their lives, to put themselves in the situation of others and to acquire social skills through the exercise of dialogue.

The two awards in the Primary Education category went to two contrasting initiatives with a shared emphasis on working as a team. In one, a series of special events took science as their leitmotiv. In the other, the interdisciplinary nexus was art, with the works of Dalí, Picasso, Miró and Kandinsky serving to stimulate pupils’ interest in artistic and literary creation.
The winning entry in Science and Technology was a Physics and Chemistry project in which pupils learned how the fundamental laws of science underlie day-to-day activities, drawing examples from the practice of sport and sports machinery.

In Humanities and Social Sciences, the focus was on cultural diversity. Teachers developed innovative materials intended to improve immigrant pupils’ classroom performance by allowing them to join in with group activities in spite of language barriers or being behind in the curriculum.

The ‘CREA Program’, winner in the other curricular subjects and areas category, set out to offer a more practical style of vocational training, tailored to the real world of work.
Finally, in the winning project applying technological knowledge, methodology and media to the innovative treatment of personal and social problems, pupils of all ages conducted experiments using the scientific method in an attempt to unlock the challenge of desalinating sea water.