The Spanish government warned a year ago that too many Catalan students had been excluded from the PISA tests

BarcelonaThe 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 portfolio headed by Milagros Tolón —head of the Ministry of Education since December 2025, eight months after the evaluations were carried out— explains that the technical staff of the National Institute of Educational Evaluation contacted the technical managers of the Superior Council for Educational Evaluation of Catalonia to inform them of the detection of incidents. However, the ministry emphasizes that these communications were limited to the technical sphere and did not reach other levels of the administration – to the political level – because at that time it was not yet possible to determine "the scope or the possible consequences" of the detected problems.

The ministry adds that it was not until March 2026, when the OECD presented the global results of the tests, that the real impact of the incidents could be assessed. Thus, the Spanish government states that it was not until four months ago that it was definitively known that the results of Catalan students would not be representative for the international report and, therefore, could not be compared with the grades of other territories nor with the same results from Catalonia in previous years. In practice, all this means that the next edition of PISA will not allow us to see if the level of Catalan students has improved or worsened.

When consulted by this newspaper, the Ministry of Education has limited itself to stating that an internal process is underway to try to identify and reconstruct the events that led to this incident. Government sources indicate that the informative diligence process will determine the origin of the error that led the Generalitat to discard 23% of the students.

The one who has spoken is the Minister of Territory, Housing and Ecological Transition and spokesperson for the Generalitat, Sílvia Paneque, who stated that the Government did not previously disclose the error in the preparation of the PISA 2025 tests so as not to "inform without evidence". "It did not seem prudent to us to give information without having minimal evidence of what could have happened," she said at the press conference after the executive council, where she said that the investigation in the Department of Education remains open. "The first detection actually occurs in March. Here begins a whole file of follow-up, of evaluation," she stated.

What exactly happened?

Broadly speaking, it can be stated that Catalonia has not correctly applied the criteria that the OECD —the initiators of the PISA tests— sets to justify that a student should not undergo the tests, which has meant that the sample of students who did take the exams is not representative of Catalan students aged 15.

Specifically, of the 2,545 Catalan students aged 15 who were supposed to participate in the PISA tests, 591 were excluded, and finally only 1,954 took the test, a deviation that, according to the Generalitat, caused "a problem of statistical representativeness". PISA allows for certain exemptions when a physical, cognitive, behavioral or emotional disability or insufficient command of the language makes it impossible to take the test properly. However, these circumstances do not automatically imply exclusion, as each student must be assessed individually according to the severity of their diagnosis.

In a statement on Monday in Parliament, the Minister of Education, Esther Niubó, argued that the Government still does not know how the error that invalidated the inclusion of Catalonia's results in the international tests occurred. In that intervention in the Education commission, Junts, CUP, PP and Vox called for the minister's resignation, while Aliança Catalana called for the dissolution of the Government and the calling of early elections.

This Tuesday, the spokesperson for Junts in Parliament, Salvador Vergés, has gone a step further and explained that his group has registered a request with the spokespersons' board for the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, to appear "urgently" — this very Friday— to explain the "scandal" of the PISA tests. PP, Vox and the CUP also showed support for modifying the plenary session schedule, but the board rejected the Junts proposal with the votes against from PSC, Comuns and ERC.

While the Republicans have voted against Junts' request because they consider it "absurd" to summon Illa before having the conclusions — and have registered their own request for the president to appear in September —, the Comuns argue that doing so in July would be a "clandestine" appearance and a favor to the president, and they demand that the explanation be given upon return with full transparency.