Salvador Illa faces the PISA fiasco in Parliament
The president of the Generalitat will show his face after announcing the will to reach a national pact to put an end to the educational crisis
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BarcelonaEducation is immersed in a permanent crisis. After months of teacher strikes and collecting poor results from students, the fiasco of the PISA tests has been added to it. In this context, and after being requested by several parliamentary forces, the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, appears this Wednesday in Parliament to give explanations about what the Catalan executive describes as an "error".
Beyond the blunder in the execution of the tests, it is expected that the head of the Government will also set out what future plans he has to put an end to the educational crisis. In fact, Illa has summoned all parliamentary groups this Friday to have a first contact with the final objective of reaching a national pact for education, which, among others, will direct education spending up to 6% of GDP.
The President of the Generalitat also announced this Tuesday that he will present measures to reduce the use of screens in classrooms and limit access to social networks by minors, as well as exclude artificial intelligence from classrooms until the age of fourteen. Illa also advocated for the return of the use of textbooks in educational centers and to promote reading among students. Furthermore, the socialist leader announced that on September 28 an interdepartmental commission will specify 60 measures on Education and has committed to promoting a law to turn these recommendations into "enforceable and lasting" norms.
The PISA fiasco
This year, the results of the PISA tests in Catalonia are not comparable to the rest of the autonomous communities nor to the OECD countries due to an "error" in the selection of the sample: a rate of students much higher than permitted was excluded. For this reason, the Minister of Education, Esther Niubó, opened three disciplinary files for employees of her department. Even so, the fiasco caused a great stir and has provoked indignation among the opposition parties, who demanded the immediate assumption of responsibilities.
