The PISA crisis and the educational crisis
The crisis in education in Catalonia not only has consequences today. If the degradation continues, the country condemns itself to a future of economic irrelevance and social fracture.
For years, Catalonia was able to observe its educational results with a certain degree of calm. It did not lead the rankings, but it was above the Spanish average. This has ended. Catalan schools have not only worsened: they have also regressed more than a good part of the systems with which they can be compared.
Between the PISA tests of 2015 and those of 2022, Catalonia lost 38 points in reading, 31 in mathematics, and 27 in science. This is not a statistical fluctuation or a collective bad day. It is a sustained failure that simultaneously affects the three basic competencies.
In 2015, Catalonia was above the Spanish average. In 2022, it fell below in all subjects: twelve points less in reading, four less in mathematics, and eight less in science. It also fell below the OECD average in all three tests.
Territorial comparisons require caution because each community has a different social and demographic composition, but they allow us to dismantle the most convenient excuse: not everyone has worsened equally. The OECD itself considers that the Catalan decline is comparatively high and responds to more structural than conjunctural problems.
The system today produces more students who do not reach the minimums and fewer excellent students. Equity and rigor are regressing at the same time. Social origin, family educational level, and migratory status continue to determine performance too much. When school ceases to correct inequalities and is limited to reproducing them, it is not the vulnerable student who has failed: it is the system.
PISA does not measure everything that matters in education. But it has an essential virtue: it allows us to observe the trend, compare ourselves with other systems, and verify whether the policies applied improve or worsen the results. When reading, mathematics, and science all decline, discussing the imperfections of the thermometer ceases to be a sufficient response.
Now, at the moment when we most needed to know if Catalonia was beginning to reverse the decline, the Department of Education has also managed to break the thermometer. The results of PISA 2025, which will be published on September 8, will not be reliably comparable either with previous editions or with those of other communities or countries.
The cause is not a sophisticated methodological debate. 23.2% of the students selected for the Catalan sample were exempt from taking the test, when the OECD recommends that exclusions should not exceed 5%. Of the 2,545 students planned, 591 did not take the exam. The sample has therefore lost the necessary representativeness to maintain a comparable series.
The Department of Education describes it as "a technical, isolated and isolated incident." But exceeding the maximum number of exclusions by more than eighteen points is not a minor incident. It is a serious failure of planning, supervision, and technical professionalism. The Catalan results will be published and counted in the Spanish total, but they will not allow us to know with certainty whether Catalan students have improved or worsened.
Statistical incompetence is not a bureaucratic detail. It prevents public policies from being evaluated, hinders accountability, and offers the administration a perfect fog to hide in. After the worst results in history, Catalonia will face the next PISA publication without being able to establish a comparable comparison with the past or with the rest. We will not know if the announced measures have served any purpose because the same Department of Education that was supposed to evaluate them has not been able to guarantee a valid sample.
To the crisis of results is added sustained labor conflict. It would be easy to blame teachers for strikes or to present any labor claim as an obstacle to learning. It would also be convenient to turn teachers into resigned heroes, immune to any demand or evaluation. Both caricatures are useless. There is no quality school without well-trained, recognized, demanding teachers subject to professional responsibility. But neither is there one with exhausted staff, overwhelmed management, insufficient specialists, and teachers forced to spend hours demonstrating in forms that they are doing the job they don't have time to do.
For too long, the Catalan debate has been trapped in battles over calendars, screens, competencies, memorization, projects, and successive pedagogical trends. Meanwhile, the essential question has been avoided: what should a student know when they finish compulsory education?
The school exists so that students can learn. So that they learn to read in depth, to write with precision, to calculate, to reason, to know history, to understand the scientific method, and to distinguish an argument from a mere occurrence. Competencies cannot replace knowledge because there is no possible competence on a void.
The country faces a crisis of results, of authority, of confidence, and now, also of technical capacity to evaluate itself. It does not need another solemn diagnosis destined to end up in a drawer, nor a new reform that is replaced before reaching the classrooms. It needs clear objectives, stability, rigor, good teachers, strong leadership, support for complex centers, and rigorous evaluations. Students, on the other hand, only have one chance to go through school. And Catalonia cannot afford to condemn its future.