No matter how you look at it, the fiasco of the Department of Education with the PISA tests cannot be justified: the OECD discovered and communicated the error in March, but the Generalitat has not reported it until now, four months later, on a Friday in late July. But we should not see any will of "concealment" and "manipulation".Even though four months have already passed, some "preliminary informative proceedings of a reserved nature" are still open to find out what might have happened, but it is not ruled out that it may have coincided with another basic competencies exam and with a "transition process" between the old Superior Council of Evaluation and the new Agency for Evaluation and Prospective of Education, and to prevent it from happening again, the Commission for Coordination of Evaluation Tests and Studies has been created.Instead of applying the maximum exclusion rate of 5% of students, a rate of 23.3% was applied, a circumstance that the Director General of Curriculum and Professional Development, who comes out to face the music (and not the minister), describes as an "technical, isolated and isolated incident". Total: the PISA test results that will be published in September will not be comparable with other territories or with other previous years in Catalonia.It is a national and international ridicule for the Generalitat, because Catalonia participates in the OECD's PISA tests with its own sample and because, seeing that in the last exam in 2022 Catalan students were below the average for the OECD, Europe, and Spain, President Illa signed an agreement with the OECD to lift the results. Well, for now, before knowing how the students have done, it is the Catalan administration that has failed. In education, we are playing with the future, and it has been too long since we have been doing well.

I am very surprised that in the great school debate we have open in the country, the main actors—with the exception of some particular voices—have ignored the decisive role that families play and that, as a consequence, they have also ignored the very serious behavioral problems in the classrooms of our schools and institutes. It seems that everything revolves around changing the Government's educational policies. But the truth is that some of the main difficulties, here and elsewhere, do not stem from the Government, but are related to parents' expectations and attitudes: their role in educational success or failure and, therefore, in students' attitudes in the classroom.

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.

With two months to go until the results of a new PISA report are known – the exams that sounded all the alarms about the level of Catalan students in 2023 – the OECD presented its analysis of the Catalan education system this Monday. A report that Salvador Illa's government asked the OECD a year and a half ago with the aim of finding the longed-for recipe to improve educational results. Although the recipe is new, the ingredients are well known: more inclusion of diversity within the classroom, incentives in the teaching career, strengthening of the role of management, and a "coherent" and aligned evaluation.

The Spanish economy will maintain a "robust" growth rate despite the conflict in the Middle East and international uncertainty, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, the institution that groups the world's advanced economies). The economic body has revised its growth forecast for Spain in 2026 upwards by one tenth, to 2.2%, in line with the estimate maintained by the Spanish government.

Spain was one of the seven countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, the think tank of the world's most developed economies) where last year the rise in taxes on wages far outstripped the increase in salaries, resulting in a loss of real income. The calculation, however, does not take into account the value of the public services citizens receive, which are funded by taxes.

The YouTubers And some social media profiles have found a new goldmine for generating discussion, tension, and therefore, more views for their content. The claim that young people (millennials and zetas) will have a much darker future than the present enjoyed by their parents and grandparents (boomersThis has reopened the debate surrounding the sustainability of pensions and a scenario of intergenerational conflict that is being particularly capitalized on by the far-right. That the system is under strain is something experts have been saying for years, but beyond the clashes between age groups, the question for the coming decades is different: how to guarantee pensions in the future?

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) announced on Monday that 147 countries have agreed to implement a global minimum tax for multinational corporations after years of negotiations, including a parallel regime that appeases the United States under Donald Trump. The OECD described it as a "juxtaposed solution" that represents "a major political and technical compromise that will lay the foundations for stability and legal certainty in the international tax system." It also ensures that the gains achieved during the long negotiation process, which led to an initial agreement in October 2021, are maintained. "It constitutes a historic decision in the area of international tax cooperation," said OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann. The new agreed-upon regime comes after the G-7 economies negotiated in June an exemption for US companies from some elements of the global agreement designed in 2021 to establish a minimum corporate tax, with a minimum effective rate of 15%. The United States had rejected it after Trump's return to the White House, threatening to impose "retaliation taxes" if it were applied to US companies. Following the G-7 agreement, the US government announced the withdrawal of these taxes from its draft budget legislation. With the agreement announced this Monday, the differentiated system for US companies will allow "the establishment of new protection regimes for multinational groups whose parent company is located in an eligible jurisdiction that meets minimum taxation criteria." This stems from a compromise reached at the end of June by the G-7 countries, which was criticized by Spain, allowing the US to maintain its regime on profits earned by its multinationals abroad. Beyond this particularly contentious issue, the agreement reached within the OECD includes other points, such as simplification measures that will reduce the cost to multinationals and tax authorities for calculating and reporting taxes. It also establishes "greater consistency" in tax incentive mechanisms and "an evidence-based balance to ensure a level playing field for all." These elements also affect the United States.

Half of preschool teachers in Spain do not read books to their students regularly. This is one of the conclusions of the latest TALIS Starting Strong report by the OECD, which analyzes the situation in schools regarding early childhood education. This year, for the first time, Spain participated. The study shows that only 55% of preschool teachers—that is, those with students between the ages of 3 and 6—read books to their students regularly. This percentage rises to 85% in the case of Ireland, which is by far the country with the highest rate of this type of classroom activity among the territories analyzed by the OECD. Turkey (69%), Sweden (68%), Chile (67%), and Japan (64%) complete the top of the ranking. Conversely, Morocco and Denmark (42%), Germany (46%), and Finland (48%) are at the bottom. Therefore, regarding the proportion of teachers who read books to their students, Spain is in the middle of the twenty or so countries on which the study focused. "There is a lot of international, but also national, evidence of the benefits of not only reading stories but also working on orality and discourse in early childhood, and even before the age of three," argues Pilar Prieto, ICREA researcher in the Department of Translation and Language Sciences at Pompeu Fabra University (UPF). Hence, Prieto insists on the need for the link between orality and literacy to be systematically addressed in all schools across the country.

Despite the global economic context marked by uncertainty and modest growth in most wealthy countries, Spain will maintain its momentum in 2025 and It will be one of the fastest growing economiesSince emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic, Spain has registered robust growth in almost all activities and sectors, driven by private household consumption—which remains the engine of the Spanish economy—the strong performance of the labor market, the recovery of the tourism sector, the arrival of European funds, and increased public spending. This is recognized by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in a new report. Economic study of Spain Published this Wednesday, the report revises GDP growth upwards for 2025 to 2.9%, and also for 2026 (2.2%). However, it's not all good news. Like any economy, Spain's also has pending tasks, the OECD points out, including fiscal consolidation. The organization focuses on deficit and debt levels and the need to reduce them. "Consolidation remains essential to steer gross public debt downwards in the medium term; comply with EU fiscal rules; adapt to increased defense spending, the aging population, and the green transition; and create room for spending that will boost the economy," the report summarizes. Therefore, the organization believes that Spain should implement a series of fiscal adjustments in terms of revenue and benefits (spending) to achieve this consolidation, that is, to strengthen sustainability and, above all, reduce public debt. Specifically, it estimates the need for adjustments at 0.4 percent of GDP: approximately 6.8 billion euros. On the revenue side (3.4 billion euros), it proposes broadening the VAT base or increasing revenue through environmental taxes. Regarding expenditure (an additional 3.4 billion euros), it focuses on pensions and the need for reform to contain spending in anticipation of the retirement of the next generation. baby boom –it again proposes measures such as linking benefits to life expectancy or extending the retirement calculation period to 35 years–. In any case, these are not new messages (they were already mentioned in the 2021 and 2023 economic study of Spain).

Teachers lack confidence in the training they have received. This is one of the main conclusions of the TALIS (Teaching and Learning International Survey) 2024 report, published by the OECD every five years and analyzing the state of education systems in more than 50 countries. According to this study, only 57% of secondary school teachers in Spain consider the initial training provided to future teachers—and, therefore, the training they themselves received—to be adequate. The international study admits that the proportion of Spanish teachers who hold this opinion "is well below" the OECD average (77%) and the European Union average (71%). The inevitable flip side of the percentage in Spain implies that almost half of secondary school teachers do not consider initial teacher training to be adequate.

In a global economic context marked by uncertainty and modest growth in many of the economies of wealthy countries, the Spanish economy appears to be emerging almost unscathed. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) slightly revised its forecasts for the Spanish economy upwards this Tuesday and estimates that it will grow 2.6% this year, two-tenths of a percentage point more than it anticipated in June, and 2% in 2026, one-tenth more than expected.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) unemployment rate remained at 4.9% in July, in line with June figures, the organization for advanced economies reported Thursday. Thus, unemployment in the OECD has now been at or below 5% for 39 consecutive months. In July, unemployment remained unchanged in 20 OECD countries for which data are available, decreased in 11, and increased in two.

A decade without improvements in student-teacher ratios in the first stage of secondary school across Spain. Between 2013 and 2023, there were no changes in the average number of students per class in the first and second years of compulsory secondary education, which remained at 25. This means that the number of adolescents per class in Spain exceeds the European Union (EU) average of 21 and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The gross domestic product (GDP, the indicator of economic growth) of the OECD as a whole, which groups the world's most industrialized countries, grew by 0.4% during the second quarter, which represents a significant rebound after the 0.2% of the first quarter. This is mainly explained by the improvement in figures from the United States, although the data published this Wednesday by the entity also contributed to this.

US President Donald Trump's trade policy is already having a direct impact on the global economy. "The global outlook is deteriorating further," the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) warned in its semi-annual report on Tuesday.think tankof the most advanced economies). In a "difficult and uncertain" context due to the US tariff war, the Paris-based organization has slightly revised down Spanish GDP growth for this year to 2.4%, two-tenths less than expected at the beginning of the year and almost a point less than last year's growth (3.2%).

The trade war launched by US President Donald Trump will have consequences for the global economy and also for the US. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)think tankof the most advanced economies) has lowered this Monday its GDP growth forecasts for the world, the United States, the Eurozone and countries particularly affected by the increase in tariffs imposed by Trump, such as Canada and Mexico, for 2025. Spain, once again, stands out and will grow more than expected.

Gonzalo Delacámara is an economist and international expert on water security. He is a water policy advisor to the European Commission, the OECD, the World Bank and the UN and a professor at IE University.

Amazon, the well-known e-commerce company, did not pay any corporate tax in 2020 in eight European countries, including Spain, where it had a total turnover of more than 44,000 million euros. How did it do it? Well, by paying tax only in Luxembourg, where the parent company of the European subsidiaries is based. This is a legal but clearly unfair practice, since it deprives the states where a large part of the economic activity takes place from obtaining resources through taxes. On the other hand, this money is concentrated in low-tax countries, such as Luxembourg, which practise tax dumping. This is what the agreement of 136 countries representing 90% of the world's GDP to apply a minimum corporate tax rate of 15% for multinationals with a turnover of more than 750 million euros aims to avoid.

After years of negotiations, 136 countries around the world - including Ireland, the United States, China and India - agreed on Friday to implement a global Google tax that will apply to all multinationals. There are still details to be finalised, but the principle of agreement is firm: a global minimum corporate tax of 15% is being pushed through. When the new global tax framework is implemented, all companies with a turnover of more than 750 million euros per year - not just tech giants like Google, Amazon, or Facebook - will have to pay this 15% in the countries where they generate revenue. The measure seeks to put an end to schemes used by multinationals to pay less tax by shifting profits to countries with very low taxation.