The Catalan PISA fiasco is not just a statistical error. It is an educational paradox. When almost one in four selected students is excluded from a test that is supposed to portray the system, the problem is not only that the sample ceases to be reliable. The problem is what this exclusion reveals about our way of understanding inclusion.An inclusive school cannot demonstrate its inclusion by excluding from assessment the students who most reveal their limits.Catalonia has participated in PISA for years, and the Administration knew the criteria, the procedure, and the importance of preserving the representativeness of the sample. It is not enough to talk about a confusion: it must be explained why no control mechanism stopped a deviation of this magnitude. There are, naturally, exceptional cases where a student cannot take a test like PISA under valid conditions. But when the exception extends to leaving out almost a quarter of the sample, we are no longer just talking about a technical problem. We are talking about a diagnosis that has ceased to represent the classrooms it intended to evaluate.Students with cognitive, emotional, behavioral, or linguistic difficulties are not an anomaly of the system. They are the system. We cannot consider them fully included if they are not counted when we evaluate what the school achieves. A common confusion arises here: identifying inclusion with protection. Protecting a student from a situation they cannot truly face may be necessary. But interpreting difficulties too broadly as a reason not to assess them is another matter. It may seem compassionate, but it can lower expectations and avoid the most uncomfortable question: what has this student learned and what has the system failed to offer them? Stopping asking is not including. What is not evaluated does not disappear. It simply stops calling to us. If the most vulnerable students are left out of the sample, the photograph may be more comfortable, but it is less honest. It no longer explains what the school is doing with all the students, but only with those we have considered more easily assessable.
When a part of the students disappears from the diagnosis, the system's responsibility towards them also weakens. Without reliable data, we do not know if the supports are working, if the adaptations allow learning, or if inclusion is more than presence and rhetoric. Processes matter, but they cannot replace results. If inclusion is only valued for what it unfolds and not for what it achieves, it can always be declared a success. It is not about defending an identical test for everyone. Inclusive education requires adaptations, diverse instruments, and professional judgment. But adapting does not mean excluding. Recognizing a difficulty cannot automatically equate to stopping looking at it.Inclusion cannot be measured solely by the number of students sharing a classroom, but by the system's capacity to assume their results. Being in the classroom does not yet mean being fully included if, when it is time to evaluate what has worked and what has not, these students are no longer counted.Perhaps the most uncomfortable problem is that the system does not quite believe in its own idea of inclusion. It proclaims it and surrounds it with support, protocols, and discourse. But when it comes time to check what it is achieving with the students who test it the most, the commitment becomes less firm. Good intentions, bad decisions. And a policy too focused on looking good in the photograph. If reality can spoil the narrative, the temptation is to leave it out of frame.The PISA case forces us to ask an uncomfortable question: do we really want to know how the system works with students who have the most difficulties, or do we just want to certify that we have them in it?An inclusive school is not one where no one looks bad in the photograph. It is one that does not crop the image so that only those who confirm the narrative appear. When an inclusive policy only accepts being evaluated if the image is favorable, it is no longer measuring inclusion. It is managing appearances.
