Educational debate: what works and what does not

Faced with an educational situation like the current one (with the low PISA 2025 results and the tensions at the start of the school year), it is understandable that solutions are being sought. The President of the Generalitat announced a national pact this week to save education. We will see how the initiative progresses. But the problem is that in education, we too often confuse looking for solutions with starting over.

A new law. A new curriculum. A new methodology. A new model. And, after a few years, a new reform that corrects the previous one.

Perhaps we should try doing it the other way around.

A few days ago, Tue Halgreen, head of PISA coordination at the OECD, said in an interview with ARA something apparently simple: in education, it is not necessary for everyone to start from scratch or for everyone to invent their own methods. There are educational systems that, in a context also marked by mobile phones, screens, and artificial intelligence, manage to maintain or even improve their results.

The question, therefore, should not only be what we must change. We should also ask ourselves what works and why.

In Catalonia, we have public and charter schools with very different realities. Educating in a privileged socioeconomic environment is not the same as doing so in a high-complexity center. Neither is working with a stable school population the same as continuously receiving students who do not know the languages of instruction.

And, despite this, we tend to prescribe general solutions for realities that are not.

There are centers that obtain good academic and educational results with different projects. Before imposing a new transformation on them, perhaps we should observe them. How do they work on reading? How do they organize learning? What role do teachers have? How do they address difficulties? How do they work with families?

What works does not need to be reformed on principle. It needs to be understood.

And then we need to do exactly the opposite where things are not working. When a center accumulates difficulties, we must know their causes. It may need more resources, but also stability of the teams, good professionals, management capacity, specialized support, or much closer guidance.

This is less spectacular than announcing an educational reform. And probably much more difficult. But it can also be much more effective.

PISA 2025 also leaves a piece of data that we should look at carefully. The OECD notes that the differences between socioeconomically advantaged and disadvantaged students have narrowed in recent years. It would be great news if it weren't for the fact that this reduction is explained mainly by the worsening of the former and not by the improvement of the latter.

This is an important warning about what we understand by equity.

Equity is non-negotiable. Whoever starts from a more difficult situation must receive more help. But equity does not mean uniformity. We cannot improve those who know less by making those who know more learn less.

True equity does not lower the ceiling. It raises the floor without preventing anyone from reaching as high as they can.

For this reason, we need support, but also demand. Autonomy, but also evaluation. And sufficient stability so that educational projects can demonstrate whether they work before a new reform changes them again.

Evaluate what has worked and what has not. Understand why some centers improve and others accumulate difficulties. Learn from experiences that yield results and correct decisions that have not.

And do so by listening to the administrations, the centers of all networks, families, and independent experts. But, above all, by listening to those who know education from the inside because every morning they open the door of a classroom.