Abstract:

The last Law oF Education (LOE) of May 3th, 2006, incorporates the basic competences in the school curriculum and it gives them an important role in the curriculum. Thus, the Spanish government assumes the indications of the international organizations (OECD, European Commission, etc..) about teaching and learning of basic competences as a way to improve the quality and equity of education. The incorporation of basic competences of the curriculum is an early commitment to bring the Spanish education system to international standards.

Health Education has been until now a transversal subject of the curriculum. With the entrance of the new law health educational contents have been broken down among all the subjects that make up each educational level. It exists an agreement about the important role for the integral development of students. Usual behaviours are not always healthy behaviours, for that reason it is necessary to include health education aims into the compulsory education, therefore most of our behaviours are learnt in our childhood in the school. As we know, the school is the place where we learn our culture. Therefore, it is obvious that the education system cannot miss this opportunity to contribute to the formation of healthy lifestyles in the population.

The citizens, on their way through compulsory education receive and learn knowledge about mathematics, language, science, etc. that allow them to integrate on the society, but.. do they need to develop necessary competences to function in a changing society, to control the factors that determine their health, individual and collective, to intervene in their immediate environment to make it more humane and nicer, definitively, to live better and longer?
We understand the competences as the capacity of solving problems or facing situations, with the attitude of wishing to do it. Therefore, health competence mean the ability and determination to solve the problems related to personal and collective health of young people. But what are the main problems that young people have to face? Which concepts, procedures and attitudes they need to learn?

To approach this knowledge, a group of professors from the Universities of Valencia, Alicante, Elche and Basque Country are developing the project "Competences to be acquired by young people and teachers in health education during the compulsory education" funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation (EDU2010-20 838). The communication that occurs is a part of this project and it is focused on how to concrete the main health problems which we should be able to answer.
For this and taking into account the literature, it has been carried on a Delphi study with experts from different regions of the Spanish state on the different fields of Promotion and Health Education. The results of the study allow us to define their related competences and develop potential tools for analysis.

Keywords:

Health competences, compulsory education, health promotion.