The Department of Education will not remove digital whiteboards from I3, I4, and I5 classrooms, as it announced it would do in June 2024. Ultimately, the Government has opted to restrict their use, but will not remove them from the classrooms of the youngest school children. The main reason is that these devices were acquired through Next Generation funds—during the term of Minister Cambray—which means that the Government currently lacks the authority to fully remove them or move them without risking the loss of guaranteed maintenance. In this way, as reported by El Periódico and confirmed by ARA, the Department of Education will eliminate "free use" of the screens in the second cycle of early childhood education and will not allow them to have an internet connection, but it will not remove them.

In the image age, visual learning also carries specific weight in education, and it is precisely this educational potential of the moving image that turns Nextus into an educational tool. The digital platform, promoted by filmmaker and founder of DocsBarcelona, Joan Gonzalez, fosters critical thinking in young people and has received the award in the Education category of the ARA newspaper's FAR Awards.

In 2024 I wrote in this newspaper an article defending the recovery of mandatory readings in schools and high schools, making it clear that “eliminating mandatory readings is a way of preserving the logic of fleeting satisfaction”. I also underlined that reading “entails the responsibility of doing what we consider good because we have a vision of country and a shared heritage: Flaubert is French cultural heritage. What is ours?” 

The need to review teacher training and the way child poverty and rising complexity in classrooms are addressed have centered the debate in the first of the meetings promoted by Pimec on education, which has featured the voices of four former ministers of the sector: Irene Rigau, Anna Simó, Meritxell Ruiz, and Ernest Maragall. In the midst of a social debate and with a national debate underway to redefine the Catalan educational model –dynamited by the error in the PISA tests, but fueled by the protests by teachers and families in the last year–, all four have agreed that it is necessary to "shield education" from different political cycles to guarantee the country's future, since the educational system is a cradle for new generations and, therefore, for facing future economic and social transformations. This, of course, always "guided by the evaluation" of results.

Something uncomfortable happened to Sweden: for years it lived off the prestige of an educational system that was no longer achieving the same results. PISA 2012 made a problem difficult to ignore: 478 points in mathematics, 483 in reading, and 485 in science. But six years later they were 502, 506, and 499. The average explains only part of the story. In mathematics, between 2012 and 2018, the percentage of students below the basic level fell by 8.3 percentage points, and those reaching the highest levels grew by 4.6. TIMSS pointed in the same direction: Swedish 8th-grade students went from 484 points in 2011 to 501 in 2015.

Crying uncontrollably when losing, being unable to wait for commercials to end, or shouting because they are not allowed to go out with their friends are situations that show a certain difficulty in managing frustration. "Frustration is a skill that must be trained day by day, because we will encounter it throughout our entire life," asserts the educational coach Mar Milán.

We talk a lot about the educational crisis and we list issues that fuel it. Examples of this are the PISA results, the open conflict with the unions, the weariness of the teaching staff, the difficulties in tackling inclusive education, and the new training dynamics in classrooms that are not like those of the past. To complicate matters even further, Wolfgang Streeck recently recalled that what we call a "polycrisis" is a bundle of chained crises (housing, infrastructure, aging, inequality, government debt, anxiety about the future) that reinforce each other while states have less and less fiscal room and wages do not rise. School is not an island. It is the place where all these crises arrive every morning, with names and surnames, at nine o'clock sharp.

The great paradox of PISA is that, despite being a test designed to measure competencies, the best results are obtained by countries that focus on knowledge (as seen in the difference between England, on one hand, and Scotland and Wales, on the other).

The Secondary School Teachers' union (aspepc·sps) has launched an offensive against "giving away" the advanced level Catalan certificate (the C1) when passing 4th year of ESO, at 16 years old. The campaign aims to collect signatures to break this automatic process, which they believe certifies students with an advanced level of language that they do not actually have.

Three academic years ago, the Department of Education, then led by the ERC government, created Sensei, a pilot program that was intended to be the foundation for creating a training program. Over time, it was meant to eventually transform into a MIR for teachers, similar to the one for doctors. The pilot was launched with a budget of eleven million euros that came from European funds. With this investment, 250 spots were offered over three academic years to train novice teachers. However, these funds only covered the Sensei program for three years, and therefore, last school year was the last one in which the Catalan education system had the pilot program for this long-awaited educational MIR. Now, to replace it, the Department of Education has launched a new training program that will be stable –unlike Sensei–, but which will have half the number of spots and will not have its own budget, but rather will be integrated into the investment that the Government makes in the teaching staff.

How to start a school year like this one, different due to the circumstances experienced last year? I am talking about the pending subject from June, the unease that the strikes, boycotts, and disagreements left behind: disappointed families and PTAs, students who have felt vulnerable after losing educational experiences they were looking forward to, tired teachers, and divided teams...

Art, in all its forms, has the capacity to generate profound changes in the personal, social, educational, and therapeutic spheres. Education is, by definition, an essential engine for moving towards a fairer, more solidary, and sustainable society. From the union of these two areas, a binomial with great transformative potential is born, which the Fundació Catalunya La Pedrera places at the center of its educational programs.

"First of all, let it be clear: we are in favor of inclusive education, but under these conditions it is impossible." This is explained by Martina, a 2nd-grade primary school teacher at a public school in the province of Barcelona. They have agreed to let ARA spend a day with them to see how inclusive school works from the inside. Without filters. However, they request anonymity. That is why all the names in this report are fictitious.

"The strength of educational systems depends on that of their teachers [...] and it is increasingly difficult to attract, train and retain high-quality teachers". With this premise, the OECD has focused its 2026 report on the state of education —the Education at a Glance— on the shortage of teachers and the measures that can be taken to address it. Among the many data analyzed by the international body is the temporary nature of teachers' contracts, a variable in which Spain clearly comes off poorly. According to the report, the Spanish state is the fifth OECD country with the highest percentage of high school teachers without a permanent contract.

"This project is not against private VET; on the contrary, it will strengthen the quality of private centers". With this statement, the Minister of Education, Milagros Tolón, has presented the draft decree with which the Spanish government wants to put an end to the privatepop-up businesses that have found a business path in the world of vocational training (VET). With the new decree, presented this Monday and which is expected to be approved before the end of the year, Pedro Sánchez's executive seeks to place specific limits and requirements on this type of private training, which in the last decade has grown exponentially, especially in the online modality. For example, in Catalonia, in the 2024-2025 academic year, there were already twice as many students taking a VET degree in the private sector as in the state-subsidized sector.

Notice for castaways and other products derived from existential shipwreck: this article is based on real-life flotation devices. It begins on a moving island. Zulu time. September 2026. Interior day. Public transport in Barcelona (it could be any other space-time of the bitter Catalonia). The boy (9 years old) sits on the floor like a rock from the Upper Chalcolithic. The mother: "Oh, honey, stand up, the floor is dirty". Rock boy: "I don't want to!!!" (A unique phrase, like an expansive sonic destructive missile.) More mother: "Oh, honey, it's dirty, people can't pass, oh, your trousers, oh, oh, oh...." Operation dialogue and more dialogue. Final result of the journey: the kid didn't budge a micrometer. Nor will he for the next thousand years. 1st Century of the human rock.

Knowing how to read, reading to learn, and a love for reading. These are the three pillars on which, according to the Department of Education, the school reading plan (PLEC) must be based. Or, in other words, the plan that sets the didactic and organizational line that a school or institute must follow to ensure that students end up being good readers. At the moment, this organizational document is only a recommendation, and only about 700 of the little more than 2,500 public educational centers have a reading plan that meets the requirements set by the Generalitat. However, among the measures to reinforce learning announced by Minister Esther Niubó this week is, precisely, making the PLEC mandatory. This implies that, for the coming academic year, more than 1,800 public schools and institutes will have to create their reading plan from scratch or modify it to comply with this directive.

It will not be easy to turn around the strained climate into which the educational world has fallen. The atmosphere has degraded too much. The good offices of the president of the Council of Education, Joan Manuel del Pozo, who is tasked with redirecting the situation by seeking the pacification of the sector and a great country agreement, give reasons for hope. But beyond good words and a good temperament, facts, clear priorities, and sensible and brave decisions will be needed. Above all, a lot of common sense: because what is needed is to change course, but without great inventions and, also, with a little patience when it comes to obtaining results. There will not be, like in football, magical comebacks.

Back to basics. Back to basics. This is the foundation of the learning reinforcement measures presented this Thursday by the Minister of Education, Esther Niubó. These measures will be focused on improving how the two main pillars of learning are taught: language and reading comprehension, and mathematics. Among the guidelines, a significant change has been announced: next year there will once again be mandatory readings in baccalaureate, and all schools and high schools will be required to have a school reading plan.

Slammed door by Ustec to the country debate to improve education in Catalonia commissioned by President Salvador Illa. In a press conference, the majority union in the education sector explained this Tuesday that it does not accept "the framework proposed by the Government" because it "intends to derive exclusively" the debate through the Education Council of Catalonia. The coordinator of union action, Andreu Mumbrú, has said that they understand the Government's proposal as "a will to deactivate mobilization and dilute the voice of professionals in the centers". "We wonder if public education needs yet another debate", he reproached.