Education, consensus and mediocrity

Few –perhaps none– public matters are more important than the improvement of the deplorable state of education in Catalonia. That is why the messages that President Illa dedicated to it in his speech last Monday are worrying. Fundamentally, he specified two objectives: to increase the budgetary effort to 6% of the GDP (as established by the current education law of Catalonia) and to build a “consensus with the parties and the educational community” after a “national debate on the future of education”.Why are these two objectives worrying? Firstly, because the current law—within the framework of which this constant deterioration of educational results has occurred—was already the product of a consensus, which was already celebrated at the time—in 2009—as if it guaranteed something good. In fact, the only dissenting voices were so for reasons that had very little to do with the quality of education (on the part of IC, the persistence of a state-subsidized private sector, and on the part of the right, linguistic issues). Will a new consensus diagnose and rectify the causes of the failure by stepping on whatever toes are necessary, or, on the contrary, will it become an exercise in avoiding difficulties and leaving everything as it is? The second is much more likely than the first, because the dynamic of consensuses is normally to agree on what is easy and to sideline what is not. In fact, the immediate enthusiasm of Junts in accepting the president's proposal makes this clear, given that parties do not get enthusiastic when it comes to making decisions that disturb the status quo.As for increasing budgetary resources, one cannot be against it, but it must be pointed out that empirical evidence—both internationally and in Spain—shows that there is no relationship between expenditure per student and results (to be more specific, the OECD estimates that there is one when the amount allocated does not reach 75,000 dollars per student between the ages of 6 and 15, but not beyond this figure, and ours is much higher than this limit). If there were a relationship, Madrid would not be at the forefront of Spanish communities in terms of results, where the Basque Country or Extremadura would be. From the point of view of equity, an analysis carried out in Spain to measure the impact of budgetary effort on "academic resilience"—that is, the ability of students to overcome the level associated with their socioeconomic status—concludes that this impact is negligible, which is to say that an improvement in the results of our students from immigrant backgrounds or poverty is not to be expected simply by pouring more money into the system.In conclusion, Illa's recipe could perfectly lead us to an equally mediocre situation, but a much more expensive one. That, of course, after many hugs between the party representatives and even the social partners.Minister Niubó does not enthuse me (how could she enthuse me if she described as “policy-fiction” the hypothesis that the PISA test results would have been even worse if the Catalan centers, instead of excluding 23.2% of the students because they presented linguistic, cognitive, or behavioral disabilities, had limited themselves to excluding 5%?). She does not enthuse me, but I must say that her statements on Catalunya Ràdio four days before President Illa's speech seem much more accurate and, therefore, promising.Where the president says to increase the budgetary allocation, Niubó spoke of the need to “reorder the system before putting more resources into it”. Where he says to build a consensus, she said “recover the role of books and reading”, strengthen school libraries and “maintain inclusion, but placing more emphasis on educational success”; that is to say, she was pointing to concrete changes without waiting to reach a consensus on them.Does the situation of education demand more resources and demand consensus? Yes, but, above all, it demands leadership from a government that proposes reforms that will not please everyone (how could they please everyone if excellence is always the product of effort?) and that must represent a break with some practices that have been imposed in the name of equity and the well-being of children and that, therefore, some will consider must be defended tooth and nail.Precisely because the current model is the result of a consensus, modifying it requires courage. Will the Government have it? I do not know, but its absence would necessarily translate into the country's mediocrity and the rise of the parties that present themselves as capable of ending a situation that gives multiple signs of decay, which are not precisely those that participated in the 2009 consensus.