After the pandemic, this academic year that has just ended has surely been the hardest of recent years. The entrenched problems in the school world have finally burst the seams of a system that neither the government, nor teachers, nor pedagogues can manage to revive. Within the framework of the global educational crisis, marked by the loss of authority and the overprotection of children, the Catalan case has its own characteristics and tensions within a complicated negative drift.
An obvious realization: we are at the antipodes of a desired virtuous circle; we are in a vicious cycle of bad vibes, almost a everyone against everyone. The hopes placed decades ago, especially with the advent of democracy, in the school as a pillar to cohere the diverse and complex Catalan society, have been frustrated. The heroes of the pedagogical renewal of the sixties and linguistic normalization of the eighties are far away. The first third of the 21st century has been one of language wars against Catalan, of cutbacks, and of general pedagogical disorientation resulting from constant changes.
And so we have arrived at this academic year marked by strikes and massive teacher demonstrations, an academic year during which the professionals' discontent, families' concern, the administration's impotence, and everyone's disorientation have been noted. Even the unions that have led the protests and negotiations with the Government have finally been overwhelmed by a revolt of teachers that no one knows how it can end.
So it is not surprising that the results in classrooms or the equity policy objectives of the system do not reach the set levels. In fact, the increase in investments in recent years has not yet been noticed in practical terms, which only generates doubts about whether the agreements reached by the ministry this June – higher salaries for teachers, more support in classrooms, lower ratios – will have a real impact on improving work in schools and institutes.
This is the evidence presented by the annual report of Equitat.org – formerly Fundació Bofill – in its 2026 yearbook. The educational think tank warns that, faced with a harsh reality, with more poor students detected every day (the proportion of adolescents with socioeconomic needs has gone from 6.8% in institutes in 2020 to 29.3% this year) and with more students needing support, the increase in resources has so far not served to turn around academic results.
Indeed, there are more resources today: public spending per student has increased by 900 euros compared to 2021. But vulnerability and "structural underfunding" are putting a brake on the longed-for improvement. In fact, in the last five academic years, the ESO graduation rate has fallen for the first time, standing at 86%, the lowest in fifteen years. School dropout primarily affects the lowest socioeconomic strata, and extracurricular activities also show a clear social bias. Faced with these differences, Equitat.org calls for unequal investment that privileges centers of high complexity. That is to say: put resources where they are most needed and where they can have the greatest effect.
