A video recorded in Brazil, showing parents making their son believe he has worms in his stomach from eating too many sweets, has generated enormous controversy. In the images, the parents show him a fake ultrasound in which a supposed worm appears to be moving inside his stomach. The boy, who still has a sweet in his mouth, ends up crying and promising to stop eating them.

The leader of ERC, Oriol Junqueras, has proposed a major political, social, and technical pact for a team of experts to lead the Department of Education for a decade, thus setting aside the partisan struggle and the professional bad blood in which the system has become mired. In the middle of August, the proposal has all the makings of passing without a ripple. The school year will probably start again in September with strikes. And the results of the botched PISA test will be made public. In other words, we will remain stuck in educational defeatism, which is the sure path to failure as a country. Does anyone else have any ideas to break the vicious cycle and enter a virtuous one?

The president of ERC, Oriol Junqueras, has raised in an interview with Europa Press the need for Catalonia to opt for a broad agreement between all political parties of democratic tradition, social and economic agents –management teams, unions and teachers– to overcome the current deadlock in the educational system, evidenced by "the strikes of recent months and the incident that "has prevented Catalonia from participating in the PISA report. According to Junqueras, this pact should be based on a model of shared, stable, and long-term governance (he proposes it be "for 8 or 12 years") with the creation of teams of experts of recognized prestige and trust within the sector, regardless of their political affiliation and of who governs the Generalitat during these terms.

Talking about sexuality at home is usually, even today, uncomfortable. Not to go any further, I invite you to remember how this topic was dealt with in your families of origin. Often, the answer is: “There was no sex education at home.” But not talking about it also educates. Transmitting to children that it makes us uncomfortable is, in essence, teaching them that sexuality is a taboo. And so, it will be difficult for us to become role models.

The Ministry of Education warned the technical services of the Ministry of Education more than a year ago that the OECD had detected a higher exemption rate of Catalan students than permitted in the PISA 2025 tests. While the international organization sets that, in the sample of a territory, the percentage of students exempt from taking the test cannot exceed 5%, in Catalonia this rate soared to 23.3%. As reported by La Vanguardia and confirmed by the ministry in a statement, the warning occurred in April 2025, when the tests were already underway – they were held between March 31 and May 16 – and it was the company in charge of managing their application for the OECD that informed the State of the anomalies.

The Minister of Education, Esther Niubó, is appearing this afternoon in Parliament to explain the Generalitat's incredible failure to organize the PISA tests. As we know, the story could not be more lamentable, no matter how you look at it: the OECD warned in March. No information was given until July, until a Friday at the end of July, to be exact, when they sent a director general to face the music and not the minister, and they describe an error in the sample of students examined, which far exceeds any explainable decimal error, as a specific and technical problem.As we explain today, the alteration of the PISA sample in Catalonia far exceeds that of any country in the latest report. It reminded me of the day when the Generalitat, under the presidency of Pere Aragonès, did not know how to correctly convene a competitive examination. With the difference that this PISA issue is an international embarrassment. And I prefer to believe it was a (serious) fiasco rather than have to think it's a way to circumvent results that will be poor given the problems that have been affecting Education in Catalonia for years. It is enough to remember that we finished the course amidst strikes and we will start it the same way. The problem with Education is in the classrooms, which are a reflection of all of society's problems, in the training of teachers, in the authority of principals, in the tension of an inclusive school that lacks the means to be worthy of the name, in a Catalonia that has been getting poorer, etc. But something is happening in the Department of Education and, by extension, in the Government, when it signs a union pact that inflames the unions, closes an agreement with the OECD to improve teaching, and, one year later, makes a big mistake in the sample for the PISA tests. And in another order of indignation, we have the multitudinous demonstration yesterday in Palma de Mallorca against the excess of tourism that has led the island, like the rest of the Balearic Islands, to collapse. There is no need for many explanations as to why the protest, because in Catalonia we know well what tourist collapse is, which affects ecology, mobility, housing, culture, language, etc. The manifesto of the call has a quite explicit paragraph on the effect of tourism: “It invaded our coasts, then our towns and our cities and is currently occupying our homes. Mallorca cannot fit any more hotels, cannot fit any more coffee franchises, fast food or cheesecakes, and cannot fit any more tourists! Mallorca at its limit! Less tourism, more life!” Such a demonstration is a sign that must be listened to and attended to with urgency. But everything suggests that it will not be so, for now, because the Balearic government and tourist interests are one. The proof is what happened in the end:

Forceful response from school principals in the face of an error that will make the PISA test results in Catalonia incomparable with other territories or previous years. The association of school principals issued a statement this Saturday in which they blame the error with the tests, warning that it will have a "devastating consequence": "Catalonia loses the possibility of comparing the evolution of its education system with the rest of the world," they warn in the text.

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.

1. This year, 45,800 Catalan students have taken the selectivity exams. Approximately 96% of these students have passed the exam to access university. Congratulations. Then, newspapers dedicate pages and more pages to publish the cut-off grade of each career, of each faculty. The result is that 6 out of 10 young people in the country have secured a place in their first university option in the July assignment. Or, in other words, there is a 40% of students who will not be able to pursue exactly the career they wanted. In one place or another, all these thousands of enthusiastic young people are starting a four-year journey, at least, that will take them to who knows where. How many walls are full of diplomas of careers with which you will never earn a living?

The Catalan education system is worse than it seems. Or not. Rivers of ink have been written about it. For those not versed in the subject, like myself, figures can help us organize our thoughts. A recent OECD study requires us to qualify the diagnosis and, above all, to review the necessary responses. In fact, the study proposes recommendations that connect with challenges shared by many other sectors that, like education, are immersed in accelerated and profound transformations.One of the elements that draws attention to the Catalan education system is the decline in PISA results. Catalonia started from a relatively advantageous position, but it has accumulated a persistent and pronounced setback, and now it is below other benchmarks. These headlines help to foster a sense of decline. However, there are aspects that have received less attention and that qualify - if not change - the diagnosis. The first: the decline in results is generalized. This forces us to look for part of the explanation in phenomena shared with other countries, probably beyond the direct reach of our education system. Something has changed that hinders learning.One piece of data gives us clues: the proportion of students with special support needs has gone from less than 10% in 2017 to almost 40% this year. You read that right: four out of ten students require differentiated attention. This is an average for the whole of Catalonia; in some centers it is lower and in others, higher. Among the factors that are growing the most is autism, with an increase of 155%. However, part of these increases are due to a better capacity to detect the support that each student needs, and the educational system intends to offer more personalized attention, quite the opposite of the narrative of a decadent system. Data like this should trigger debates and research that go beyond the educational sphere.Socioeconomic factors

Second, the decline in PISA results is more intense in Catalonia than in the OECD countries as a whole or in other reference regions. However, if the change in the socioeconomic composition of the student body is taken into account, the differential is substantially reduced. In other words: the decline is greater because the proportion of students with unfavorable socioeconomic conditions has increased. The OECD, and other academic studies, link this in part to the increase in child poverty and migratory flows. Once again, it is advisable to avoid simplifications: it is not that these students have less academic potential, but rather that they find themselves with more difficult economic and family conditions, late incorporations into the system, and linguistic barriers. The sum of these factors makes teaching difficult and affects school performance. The results of students from affluent socioeconomic backgrounds are similar to those of other reference regions.The focus, therefore, must be on how to adapt the educational system to an environment that has changed rapidly and become more complex. Thus, the specter of decline is dispelled, the need to flee simplistic headlines is recalled, and at the same time, action is called for. The stress under which the educational system lives requires more resources and, according to the OECD report, the effectiveness with which they are used also needs to be improved. Support for each center must be adjusted according to its changing needs and, at the same time, stable teaching teams must be guaranteed who know and can support the students.This same environment also demands a boost to the professional training system and the creation of mechanisms to detect and disseminate best practices. These are challenges that are not exclusive to education. No sector escapes the accelerated social and technological transformation we are experiencing. No company can avoid rethinking its processes, identifying good practices, or keeping employees trained in a context of change and limited resources. We are all familiar with the confusion and anxiety that this situation generates, and which often fuels resistance to change and distrust.However, the education system is not just another sector. It is the cornerstone upon which society is built. If we want it to remain prosperous, just, and free, it must take a step forward: assume leadership and set the path. We need the education system to teach us a lesson again.

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When in January 2025 President Salvador Illa announced that he was signing an agreement with the OECD, the reaction was one of great reticence. The context did not help at all. We were coming from a report by experts from the country itself that had remained as just one more diagnosis. What new could international experts tell us that we didn't already know? Nor did the image the OECD has in education help, although those of us who have known it from the inside know that there is life beyond PISA. Its reviews of educational policies systematically incorporate objectives of equity, inclusion, pedagogical quality, leadership, and well-being, and are based on an extensive consultation process with the actors in the system. Another issue – they are well-founded criticisms – is the cost of these reports.Now that we have the OECD report, intelligence is needed to make the most of this collaboration. To begin with, it is positive to put Catalonia's education system on the map and have a report like those of Scotland, Wales, and Quebec. It would also be good for the Minister of Education to be invited to the OECD International Summit on the Teaching Profession, the main global forum on teaching policies, which annually brings together education ministers and leaders of reference education systems. The United Kingdom brings representatives from the governments of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.It is advisable to read the report carefully and avoid reductionist headlines. It is surprising that, often, everything has been reduced to a debate about ratios. Because the OECD's message is different, and much deeper. The report "Improving learning outcomes in Catalonia" does not seek a single cause nor does it offer any miraculous recipe, but rather it changes the question: it invites us to stop thinking only about which reforms we want to promote and to concentrate on the real capacity of the system to make them possible.This perspective is especially relevant for Catalonia. Over the last few decades, we have approved laws, decrees, curricular frameworks, and programs; we have incorporated concepts such as equity, inclusion, competencies and center autonomy. But too often we have confused political decision with real transformation, as if a reform already existed when it has been published in the DOGC. The decisive question is another: what happens next? What happens when a policy reaches the territorial services? Who accompanies the management teams? How are the necessary professional capacities built? How do we know if what we have designed really reaches the classrooms? What do we do when we discover that it does not arrive?The OECD hits the nail on the head when it talks about coherence, coordination, and implementation capacity. The idea already appeared a decade ago in the report Learning education systems: a strategic horizon for Catalonia, which I prepared at the request of the Higher Council for the Evaluation of the Education System of Catalonia. International trends were clear: the systems that achieve the best results are not those that accumulate the most reforms, but those that learn from evidence, from the experience of schools, their professionals, and the mistakes made. They learn because they have spaces of trust and governance capable of ensuring continuity in policies beyond electoral cycles.

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New ruling against Catalan in schools. The Supreme Court (TS) has ruled that Spanish cannot be excluded from the signage of public educational centers in Catalonia. It does so by annulling a section of a document on the organization and management of educational centers for the 2022/23 academic year, which was approved by the Generalitat in July 2022 and stated that "the signage of the center's spaces is in Catalan, Occitan in Aran, and in Catalan Sign Language if applicable, which are the reference languages of the educational system." The Supreme Court rules against a judgment by the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC), following an appeal filed by the Assembly for a Bilingual School of Catalonia with the support of the Prosecutor's Office.

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The increase in the 2026 Budgets, with a record expenditure of 49.162 billion euros, represents a necessary injection of resources to strengthen one of the Government's priority areas: education. The Department of Education and Vocational Training is one of the main beneficiaries of the new accounts, with an allocation of 8.356 billion euros, 24.5% more than in 2023, representing 20.7% of the Generalitat's total expenditure.

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Administering insulin to a diabetic student or changing a gastric button are needs that teachers or school assistants at schools and institutes often have to manage. These are tasks for which many have no training and which generate insecure situations for families and also for the teachers who have to manage these types of cases. Now, however, in some educational centers these episodes will be reduced, as the Government has announced that next year half of schools and institutes – public and private – will have a nurse who will come to the center to provide care. This does not mean that each school will have a nurse permanently, but rather that the same professional will be responsible for this task in several schools and institutes in the area in a programmed manner. The forecast is that this Education and Health program will reach all centers in the 2027-2028 academic year.

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"We saw that they were finishing ESO without the title because they were very far from what the curriculum requires, and of course, they left with one hand in front and another behind," explains Loles Resa, head of secondary studies at the Sant Josep de Gràcia school. She speaks about what some students at the center had experienced, but it is not an isolated situation. According to the Equitat.org yearbook released this week, after many years of increasing or remaining stable, in the last five academic years the rate of ESO graduates has fallen consecutively. Despite being high, the percentage has gone from 93% to 86% in the 2024-2025 academic year, the lowest ESO graduation rate in fifteen years.

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"Even if our sole concern were national economic growth, we would have to protect humanistic education." This is stated by the American philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum (New York, 1947), according to whom, in schools and universities worldwide, the exact opposite is happening: the humanities (literature, history, philosophy, etc.), as well as the arts, are increasingly scorned, if not directly eliminated. What is happening to us? Nussbaum is in no way against hard sciences or technological knowledge. But she warns against the error of despising humanistic knowledge and the critical thinking associated with it. And she warns that, at the same time as the curriculum is being stripped of humanistic elements, the pedagogy of memorization is being reimposed (obviously, this does not mean she rejects all memorization).

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Catalan teachers already know which school or institute they will be working in next academic year. This Tuesday, the Department of Education published the definitive destinations for teaching staff for the 2026-2027 academic year, known as the summer assignments. The publication of the position each teacher and professor will fill has been made one month earlier than previously done and after last year there was a major upheaval when a "deliberate" error by one of the department's employees forced the entire process to be repeated and its results to be delayed.

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After the pandemic, this academic year that has just ended has surely been the hardest of recent years. The entrenched problems in the school world have finally burst the seams of a system that neither the government, nor teachers, nor pedagogues can manage to revive. Within the framework of the global educational crisis, marked by the loss of authority and the overprotection of children, the Catalan case has its own characteristics and tensions within a complicated negative drift.

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More poor students, more students needing support, and an investment that, despite increasing, is not managing to improve educational results. This is the radiography of the situation of Catalan education provided by Equitat.org – formerly Fundació Bofill – in its 2026 yearbook.

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A petition on the Change.org platform has collected over a thousand signatures in just 24 hours, calling for a review of the mathematics exam for the PAU (University Entrance Exams). On Tuesday, it became known that this year's test achieved an average score of 4.18; a failing average and the lowest since 2014, when it was a bare 4. In fact, in the last twelve years, the average for this subject has only been a fail on three occasions: this year (4.18), 2024 (4.87), and 2014 (4).

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