Spain, the third OECD country where most repeat a grade

BarcelonaOne in every five 15-year-old Spanish adolescents has repeated a school year. This is shown by the PISA report data analyzed by EsadeEcPol and Save the Children in a study made public this Wednesday. According to the analysis of the OECD educational tests, 22% of students in the country have repeated at some point in their trajectory before reaching 4th year of ESO. The Spanish proportion is almost ten points above the European average (12.9%) and is directly double the average of the OECD countries as a whole (9.8%). According to the EsadeEcPol analysis, Spain is the third country in the OECD where grade repetition is most common.

In fact, the report warns that, contrary to the messages that had been spreading recently, the trend towards less repetition has stagnated in Spain and the proportion of students who repeat is almost the same as in 2022 when it was 21.7%. Although Catalonia does not appear in the report because it was excluded from the PISA report for excluding more students than permitted, the Catalan educational system is a rara avis regarding the practice of repetition compared to the rest of the country. In this sense, the 2022 PISA report evidenced how 7.4% of 15-year-old Catalan students had repeated a grade, while all autonomous communities except Asturias (17%) and the Basque Country (16%) were above 20%.

In the PISA report made public last week, once again, all communities except Asturias, the Basque Country, and Cantabria have more than 20% of students who have repeated a grade.

It is repeated more in the public sector

The report by EsadeEcPol and Save the Children warns that in the case of grade repetition, the inequality between the most socially disadvantaged students and the most well-off is abysmal. The PISA report divides students into four groups based on their socioeconomic situation, and in the fourth group—the most vulnerable—40% of students have repeated a grade at some point. In contrast, in the first group—the most well-off students—the proportion of students who have repeated a grade falls to 7%. In this sense, the analysis shows how, despite having the same level of competence, a student with a low socioeconomic status is five times more likely to repeat a grade in Spain than a well-off student. This indicator for Spain is the second highest in the entire OECD.

Beyond the EsadeEcPol study, the PISA report shows that in Spain, repetition is more frequent in public schools than in private ones. "This difference is especially pronounced in Spain, far exceeding that observed in the OECD average and the EU total," the OECD report warns. In this sense, on average, in private and charter schools, 12.7% of 4th-year ESO students have repeated a grade, while this percentage rises to 26.3% in the case of Spanish public high schools. In contrast, in Europe and the OECD as a whole, the difference in repetition between public and private schools is only one percentage point.

Faced with this scenario, the authors of the EsadeEcPol study are blunt: "Spain maintains a mechanism that disproportionately penalizes those who start with the greatest disadvantage".