It is one of the main concerns of families, teachers, and professionals: that students use artificial intelligence (AI) to study – or to have to do less and get good grades easily –. It is also one of the novelties of the PISA report, which has analyzed country by country what use students make of this technology and how it impacts their academic performance. However, analyzing the results, it cannot be concluded that there is a clear relationship between using AI and achieving – or not – new knowledge.

The PISA report released this Tuesday by the OECD shows a significant change in trend in Spain. Beyond reaching the worst level in history, and unlike what happened with the 2022 edition, the Spanish students who have worsened the most are those with a higher socioeconomic level. Specifically, in reading comprehension, the wealthiest students have lost 33 points, double that of the most vulnerable students (-15). The same happens with mathematics: students with a better socioeconomic situation lose 24 points, while those of lower social status lose 10. In other words, regarding reading, the richest students have lost a year and a half of knowledge in Spain, while their poorer peers have regressed less than a year. The difference is even more abysmal in sciences: the wealthiest students lose triple the points than the most disadvantaged ones.

Educational results in the State are in free fall, as evidenced by the PISA 2025 report made public this Tuesday, from which Catalonia has been excluded for excluding more students than permitted. The OECD report confirms that 15-year-old Spanish students –between 3rd and 4th year of ESO– have the worst level in the history of the State in the PISA tests. Furthermore, the drop is significantly higher than that suffered by Spain in the last edition when, after the pandemic, there was a drastic reduction in scores around the world that set off all alarms.

Both the OECD, the Ministry of Education, the Department of Education, and the Evaluation Agency have made it clear that after the error in the test sample, the results for Catalonia in the PISA report are neither analyzable nor comparable with other territories and other editions. Catalonia excluded more students than permitted (23%, when the maximum is 5%) due to physical, cognitive, and emotional disabilities or lack of language proficiency, and this caused the OECD to exclude it from the global report. The same did not happen with Murcia, which also exceeded the limit by excluding 13% of students, but which the economic organization decided to keep in the report while warning of possible biases with an asterisk.

In the latest teacher mobilizations of the academic year, one of the actors that emerged to represent teachers was the Educational Assembly of Catalonia (AEC). An organization, outside of the unions, created from each of the school and institute assemblies in Catalonia. Its rise has been so great that it was the AEC, and not the unions, that first announced the strike for the start of this academic year. Roger Rovira and Marta García are teachers and members of the AEC.

This Tuesday will be the sixth time that Catalan teachers have been called to strike across Catalonia in less than a year. In fact, if all the territorial strikes that were organized at the end of last school year are taken into account, a teacher or professor in the Catalan educational system who has participated in all of them will have been on strike for almost ten days – and, therefore, without pay – this 2026. Nevertheless, USTEC and the CGT, the two unions on the board calling for the stoppage – joined by the Intersindical and COS – and the brand new Catalan Educational Assembly (AEC) clearly see that the strike for the first day of school is "necessary", since, in their view, the Government has not properly reopened negotiations following the teachers' rejection of the pre-agreement in May.

The controversy over the errors in the Catalan sample for the PISA tests continues to cause a stir. After the FECC, which represents two-thirds of state-subsidized schools, requested that the end-of-stage tests –the former basic competencies– be administered again in all schools and institutes, this Friday the Agency for Evaluation and Prospective of Education (APE) issued a statement defending that it already guarantees sufficient data to the schools and the Government so that they can make decisions regarding the academic level of the students. In this way, the APE closes the door to making the end-of-stage tests universal, which since last school year are no longer held in all schools and institutes.

Confirmed. On the first day of this 2026/27 school year there will be a teachers' strike. This was announced by USTEC –the majority union within the education sector– and the CGT after meeting this Thursday morning with the Minister of Education, Esther Niubó. Upon leaving the meeting, where for the first time, members of the new Educational Assembly of Catalonia (AEC) were also invited, the spokesperson for USTEC, Iolanda Segura, criticized that, in the union's view, the Government is not members of the new Educational Assembly of Catalonia (AEC), yet willing to open a new cycle of negotiations to address the problems of public education. "They have not made us a proposal for a calendar of these meetings where we can negotiate [...], therefore, we invite the entire collective to join the strike to move towards the public school that our country needs and that our students need," argued Segura. For her part, from the CGT, the secretary general of the Federation of Education, Laura Gené, stated that the group's demands are clear and are "exactly the ones that existed" and that led to a "resounding no" to the May pre-agreement. "This is not about wages, this is about resources," she said.

The PISA tests fiasco in Catalonia has revived demands related to the assessment of Catalan students. After Education Minister Esther Niubó explained this Monday the error that has invalidated Catalonia's results in the OECD tests – having excluded more students than allowed, an error for which the State gave up to seven warnings and which, according to Niubó, if they had been heeded would have allowed the situation to be corrected – the subsidized school has demanded that the end-of-stage tests – the old basic competencies – be conducted again in all centers. The objective, they explain, is to somehow compensate for the information gap that the lack of reliable results in the PISA tests will leave.

The new Secretary General of Education – the number 2 to Minister Esther Niubó – will be Marta Clari i Padrós. As the ARA has learned, Clari will replace Teresa Sambola, who had held the position since the start of the legislature as the minister's right-hand woman. Niubó announced this very Monday that she was replacing Sambola, after explaining the conclusions of the investigation into the errors made in the PISA sample which have invalidated Catalonia's results in the OECD tests.

Up to seven times the National Institute for Educational Evaluation (INEE) warned that Catalonia had made errors in the student sample in the PISA tests. This is one of the main conclusions of the preliminary proceedings that the Department of Education has opened following the fiasco that has left Catalan results out of the OECD comparisons: 23% of students were discarded from the sample, when the OECD states that the maximum number of exempt students cannot exceed 5%. The minister Esther Niubó presented the conclusions of the investigation this Monday, which also points to deficiencies in the communication of criteria to the schools, and announced the replacement of the Secretary General of Education. The department has three disciplinary proceedings open.

Just one week remains before the start of a school year already marked by two key points: the teachers' strike called for the first day of class and the error in Catalonia's sample that invalidates the PISA test results, which will be announced on the same day students return to school. Beyond any moves the Government may make in the next seven days to try to approach a certain normality for the first day of school, the Department of Education has also announced novelties for the 26-27 academic year. Among them are 500 new welcome classroom provisions, a pilot test to incorporate the figure of a manager to assist school leadership, the incorporation of a thousand teachers, and a new guide on how students should use AI. All of this will be detailed this Monday by the Minister of Education, Esther Niubó, in a press conference where she is expected to also give new explanations about the PISA error.

When Regis Marques arrived at the school he now directs a decade ago, the nickname by which it was known said it all: "It was the Nightmare Park," recalls the Brazilian teacher. "Inside the school there was drugs, a lot of violence, and a degradation that, having been inaugurated in 2013, made no sense. They were robbed once a week and in three years everything had been destroyed," he recalls.

At just 28 years old, Marcela was already running a newspaper with almost a hundred collaborators in Colombia. Despite having to deal with threats due to border conflicts – several journalists from the area were killed – and promoting dozens of initiatives to revive her town's community, what finally blocked Marcela was motherhood. After fleeing the country pregnant and accompanied by her partner, she arrived in Catalonia a year and a half ago, and when her son, Fer, was born, she collapsed. "You have 20,000 personal things inside, but then motherhood arrives and it hits you like a slap," she admits.

The images of saturation on the platforms and crowds on trains to travel by train to the south of the country on the day of the eclipse continue to have repercussions. This Friday, two days after the chaos, the Government admitted that there was a "collapse" on Rodalies (commuter rail) during the afternoon of the astronomical phenomenon. But the Secretary of Mobility and Infrastructure, Manel Nadal, defended that it only occurred on the way south and that, on the other hand, the return "was orderly". However, in the evening, scenes of queues to enter the stations, especially those in Tarragona, and platforms packed to the brim were repeated, and Civil Protection had to activate the Ferrocat plan for crowds in pre-alert.

Officially and according to the school calendar, the 2026-2027 school year in Catalan schools and institutes begins on Tuesday, September 8. However, the teacher unrest of recent months may mean that classes do not start normally this year. This Monday, the spokesperson for Ustec, Iolanda Segura, stated in declarations to RAC1 that it is "complicated" that the strike planned for the first day of school is called off, and denounced that there is no negotiation with the department. "We had a meeting with the [Education] counselor at the beginning of July and we haven't heard anything since then," she told RAC1.

Not even the guitarist of Queen wanted to miss it. Brian May has been just one of the hundreds of thousands of people who this Wednesday have dropped everything to experience a minute and a half that is already history: the only total solar eclipse that will be seen in Catalonia —and in part of the Iberian Peninsula— in more than a century. From the Trabucador sandbar in the Ebro Delta, from a cove in Mallorca, from the Prades mountains, or even from an industrial estate in Valls or from a municipal football field in a Lleida neighborhood. Neither the heat nor the fear that the clouds would play tricks have hindered this astronomical phenomenon for which Catalonia had been preparing for more than a year.

"I wasn't very aware of what it meant to be the first... I took it naturally," acknowledges Miriam Galisteo, the first woman to join the Barcelona Fire Department. It was 2007, and she was 31 years old. "My colleagues had to get used to my presence. It wasn't difficult for me, but for them, a more paternalistic streak emerged, trying to protect me or not seeing me as capable of doing certain things," recalls the firefighter. She also explains that she didn't consider herself a role model until new generations of female firefighters joined and told her she was for them. "There are already 20 or 22 of us girls, but there are still attitudes and comments... In the end, it's like society, it moves slowly," she warns.

It will be only 1 minute and 32 seconds for those who see it from places where darkness will be total, but in Catalonia, an equal event will not be seen for another 154 years. This exceptionality makes the solar eclipse of this August 12th a milestone marked on the calendar for months –or years– for many, and the adventures to achieve the best experience to see it are almost infinite.

This Friday, the Department of Education communicated that, due to an error, Catalonia's results in the PISA tests will not be valid for comparison with other territories nor with Catalan results from previous years. The reason is that when deciding how many students did not take the tests due to learning difficulties, Catalonia exceeded the limit: it discarded 23% of the students in the sample when the OECD marks that the maximum number of exempted students cannot exceed 5%.