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.

More than 280,000 primary and secondary school teachers from 55 countries participated in the OECD's TALIS 2024 (Teaching and Learning International Survey) report, the largest international survey and the leading source of comparative information on the profession and its working conditions. Headlines in Catalonia regarding TALIS 2024 have been contradictory. We have seen some highlight teacher satisfaction and commitment, while others warn of overload, stress, or lack of institutional support. Depending on who is reading it—administration, unions, or organizations—interpretations of TALIS vary: some emphasize teacher discomfort and stress; others, teacher satisfaction and commitment. But behind this diversity lies a common and worrying message: the lack of teacher policies, both at the national and Catalan levels.

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.