Salvador Illa makes common cause with Niubó after the PISA tests fiasco

BarcelonaSalvador Illa teams up with the Minister of Education, Esther Niubó, after the Government made public "the error" in the PISA tests. "All the support", expressed the President of the Generalitat from Vietnam, where he is on an official trip. It is the first time that Illa has spoken about this fiasco, which the Department of Education made public on Friday and for which Niubó is scheduled to appear in Parliament on Monday to give explanations. In fact, Illa has assured that the minister will "make things clear" in her appearance. The "technical incident" that the Generalitat spoke about on Friday will not allow Catalonia to compare the results that will be made public in September with other territories or with previous years.

"I want to highlight that this has been a technical issue related to students exempt from taking this test and not due to any other consideration," the head of the executive stressed in statements to the press. Along the same lines, this Saturday the secretary for Educational Improvement of the Department of Education, Ignasi Giménez, pointed out that the cause of this error had been a "confusion" when applying the criteria for student exemption, because during the same period of time other evaluation tests were being carried out, those for the end of the 4th year of ESO, with different criteria regarding possible student exclusions.

In an interview on RAC1, Giménez also explained that the Ministry of Education informed them in March that this incident could have occurred in the PISA tests, but confirmation did not arrive "until relatively few weeks ago". In this regard, he assures that when the department had this confirmation, they opened a procedure to "seek all the necessary information to clarify this matter".

What exactly happened? Catalonia has not correctly applied the criteria that the OECD – the initiators of the PISA tests – sets to justify that a student does not have to take the tests, which has meant that the sample of students who did take the exams is not representative of the Catalan student population aged 15. Specifically, the OECD states that the percentage of students exempted for reasons such as a disability or not knowing the language must be a maximum of 5%, and in the 2025 tests in Catalonia – the latest ones conducted, and of which the result is still unknown – this percentage soared to 23.2%. In other words, the number of students who did not take the PISA tests in Catalonia was too high for the exam results to represent the real level of students born in 2009.

The opposition demands explanations

From the opposition, Junts and also the PP have already asked the Government for explanations, in addition to Niubó's appearance. The majority union USTEC has also reproached the ministry for hiding this information for months and has demanded an independent audit, that the executive assume responsibilities and that the Government's agreement with the OECD be ended.