When in January 2025 President Salvador Illa announced that he was signing an agreement with the OECD, the reaction was one of great reticence. The context did not help at all. We were coming from a report by experts from the country itself that had remained as just one more diagnosis. What new could international experts tell us that we didn't already know? Nor did the image the OECD has in education help, although those of us who have known it from the inside know that there is life beyond PISA. Its reviews of educational policies systematically incorporate objectives of equity, inclusion, pedagogical quality, leadership, and well-being, and are based on an extensive consultation process with the actors in the system. Another issue – they are well-founded criticisms – is the cost of these reports.Now that we have the OECD report, intelligence is needed to make the most of this collaboration. To begin with, it is positive to put Catalonia's education system on the map and have a report like those of Scotland, Wales, and Quebec. It would also be good for the Minister of Education to be invited to the OECD International Summit on the Teaching Profession, the main global forum on teaching policies, which annually brings together education ministers and leaders of reference education systems. The United Kingdom brings representatives from the governments of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.It is advisable to read the report carefully and avoid reductionist headlines. It is surprising that, often, everything has been reduced to a debate about ratios. Because the OECD's message is different, and much deeper. The report "Improving learning outcomes in Catalonia" does not seek a single cause nor does it offer any miraculous recipe, but rather it changes the question: it invites us to stop thinking only about which reforms we want to promote and to concentrate on the real capacity of the system to make them possible.This perspective is especially relevant for Catalonia. Over the last few decades, we have approved laws, decrees, curricular frameworks, and programs; we have incorporated concepts such as equity, inclusion, competencies and center autonomy. But too often we have confused political decision with real transformation, as if a reform already existed when it has been published in the DOGC. The decisive question is another: what happens next? What happens when a policy reaches the territorial services? Who accompanies the management teams? How are the necessary professional capacities built? How do we know if what we have designed really reaches the classrooms? What do we do when we discover that it does not arrive?The OECD hits the nail on the head when it talks about coherence, coordination, and implementation capacity. The idea already appeared a decade ago in the report Learning education systems: a strategic horizon for Catalonia, which I prepared at the request of the Higher Council for the Evaluation of the Education System of Catalonia. International trends were clear: the systems that achieve the best results are not those that accumulate the most reforms, but those that learn from evidence, from the experience of schools, their professionals, and the mistakes made. They learn because they have spaces of trust and governance capable of ensuring continuity in policies beyond electoral cycles.
The most valuable contribution of the OECD report is to remind us that Catalonia does not need to start from scratch. We have many of the institutional, professional, and political foundations necessary to move forward. The challenge is not to create new structures or add initiatives, but to give meaning, coherence, direction, and resources to those that already exist.For years we have known that educational leadership is one of the factors with the greatest impact on school improvement. However, we continue to have leadership positions with little room to configure teams, excessively burdened with administrative tasks, and subject to constant changes in priorities. What is the OECD's first recommendation? To strengthen leadership, an area in which we seem to be going backwards.The same applies to teacher professional development. The OECD recommends establishing professional standards and support for teachers in their early years. What has happened to the teacher competency framework that a group of experts developed? Where has the Sensei initiative gone? We have territorial services, networks, training, and support structures, but what shared model guides them? How do they connect? What impact do they have on teachers' practices and students' learning? Without a coherent vision, the risk is to multiply activities without building professional capacity.Evaluation also calls us into question. The activation of the Evaluation Agency opens up an important opportunity, but do we want an evaluation oriented towards control or improvement? Do we want to generate reports or useful knowledge for decision-making? Are we willing to guarantee its independence?The great educational transformations do not depend solely on ideas. They depend on the ability to sustain them over time, build solid institutions, generate trust, maintain shared priorities, and turn good intentions into daily practices. This is why the most important part of the report is not what has been presented these days. The most important part begins now. The diagnosis is valuable, but success will depend on how the OECD advises and accompanies the second phase. Above all, it will depend on all the actors in the education system – Government, Parliament, employers' associations, trade unions, universities, pedagogical renewal movements, professional associations, educational entities, and centers – assuming the shared responsibility of making the proposed improvements possible.
