Let's talk about the PISA tests, after this error that (fortunately) leaves Catalonia out of comparisons. In order to assess the level – or if you prefer level, competencies– of the students, from each community the institutes are chosen, and once the institutes are chosen, the students, just like when political surveys are done. Because in surveys, in sampling, that thing of “Spain is one and not fifty-one".
In these tests, students with learning disabilities are excluded. The Department of Education explained that "of the 2,545 students selected within the sample, up to 591 were decided not to take the exams: six due to physical disability, 92 due to insufficient language proficiency, and up to 493 due to cognitive, emotional, or behavioral disabilities." However, in Catalonia, 23% of students were excluded, when the OECD marks that a maximum of 5% can be exempted.
And well. Let's imagine that the tear dispenser finds 15 students who are unable to read, for different reasons, in a class of twenty-five. How does it manage to exclude only 1.25 of them? What's the point, for the sake of the sample, of excluding one, if you'll leave 14? Therefore, let no one be excluded, which is the same thing.
I think what would be really useful is for all students to take the tests. Those with high complexity, those with cognitive problems, those who have just arrived: those who are there. If it turns out that many are unable, for various but unavoidable reasons, to read, we need to rethink the system. They are not the minority. And what we want – at least I do – is for them to succeed. Among the students who have taken the PISA tests are the future president of the Generalitat, the future director of ARA, and the future, I hope, columnist who signs these lines (over my dead body).
