Country pact for education. Either now, or never

When the Minister of Education herself describes the PISA blunder as "very serious", when she admits that the problem could have been solved in time, when she reveals that the State warned on seven occasions about the error in the sample, almost everything has been said.Even more so: when the disaster costs the number two of the department her position, a senior official is subjected to disciplinary proceedings for “omissions that constitute carelessness or negligence in the fulfillment of established obligations” and two more proceedings are opened for serious misconduct against two civil servants for a “presumed breach of their obligations and duties as public officials”, it is pertinent to ask what is happening in the Department of Education, because we are not facing errors, but attitudes, attitudes sustained over time, so sustained (seven warnings!) that we join the hypothesis formulated today in our editorial that it was not bad faith. Was it a matter of excluding students from the sample who would probably perform poorly? Was it a matter of protecting the Government from the disrepute of a fall to even lower positions in the European school rankings? Or an attempt to harm it, considering that President Illa focused on the PISA report as soon as he took office as president, when he signed a collaboration agreement with the OECD in January 2025 to improve the skills of Catalan students in four years and redirect the results of the educational system? Well, not only has there been no redirection, but there has been an international failure of our Government, an executive that came to demonstrate good management, opposed to the independence fervor of a whole decade that was considered lost.

The stumble in the PISA tests has seriously affected the Government, casts a shadow over how the Department of Education functions (who is in charge) and has ended up being the cherry on top of the bitter cake that has been cooked in recent years in the educational reality of our country: there are not enough resources in schools and institutes, there is a lack of rigor in accessing the teaching profession, directors lack authority, and there is a lack of intelligence and flexibility to discern which technological and pedagogical innovations are good and which are fads within the framework of a more diverse student body than ever. Faced with all this, parties and unions should be able to reach national agreements, because what is at stake is the country itself.

Good morning.