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

BarcelonaThe Ministry of Education warned the Generalitat more than a year ago about the incidents detected by the OECD in the PISA 2025 tests, related to a higher exemption rate for students than permitted. While the organization stipulates that, in a territory's sample, the percentage of students exempt from taking the test cannot exceed 5%, in Catalonia it 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, after the company responsible for managing their application for the OECD informed the State of the anomalies.

The ministry, headed by Milagros Tolón — minister of Education since December 2025 — explains that technical staff from the National Institute for Educational Evaluation contacted the technical managers of the Higher Council for Educational Evaluation of Catalonia to convey the detection of incidents. However, it notes that these communications were limited to the technical level and did not reach other levels of administration 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. "It was not until March 2026 that knowledge of the impact of those technical incidents on the test results was obtained," it states. This means that the results of Catalan students will not be representative and, therefore, cannot be compared with the scores of other territories or with Catalonia's own results in previous years. In other words, the PISA report will not allow us to see whether the level of Catalan students has improved or worsened. 

Broadly speaking, Catalonia has not correctly applied the criteria that the OECD —the initiators of the PISA tests— sets to justify that a student should not take the tests, which has meant that the sample of students who did take the exams is not representative of Catalan students aged 15. In a hearing on Monday in Parliament, the Minister of Education, Esther Niubó, defended that the Government still does not know how the error occurred that invalidated the inclusion of Catalonia's results in the international tests and that the Generalitat launched an internal process four months ago to gather information and reconstruct the events.