The Assessment Agency maintains that they provide enough data and it is not necessary to redo tests in all schools

BarcelonaThe controversy over the errors in the Catalan sample for the PISA tests continues to cause a stir. After the FECC, which represents two-thirds of state-subsidized schools, requested that the end-of-stage tests –the former basic competencies– be administered again in all schools and institutes, this Friday the Agency for Evaluation and Prospective of Education (APE) issued a statement defending that it already guarantees sufficient data to the schools and the Government so that they can make decisions regarding the academic level of the students. In this way, the APE closes the door to making the end-of-stage tests universal, which since last school year are no longer held in all schools and institutes.

In a statement, the APE, which is the body that since July 2025 officially replaces the Higher Council of Evaluations –the latter entity, to which the first investigations have attributed the error in PISA–, insists that Catalonia "will have sufficient data so that schools and the Government can design their practices and policies in an informed manner, and so that interested research groups can carry out their own analyses".

In this sense, they defend that they are "the public and independent body in charge of ensuring the quality and rigor of the evaluations of the education system" and explain that they will be in charge of analyzing and presenting the results of "the own evaluations carried out in the 2025/26 school year" –the end-of-stage ones held by Catalonia–. They also detail that they will analyze the data from the general system evaluations –organized by the Spanish government– and international evaluations such as PIRLS 2026 (on reading comprehension).

PISA data in Catalonia is useless

Regarding the PISA test results that will be known on September 8th –coinciding with the start-of-school strike–, the APE warns that the error in the sample means that "any analysis intended to be made with the collected data is not representative of the reality of learning in the Catalan educational system".

Finally, the Agency insists that they will maintain "a policy of transparency that will lead to publishing open microdata from their own studies and from international and state studies". "We will always be open and available to offer all that information that allows for a better understanding of the studies and evaluations we have managed, their methodological approach, and their implications for the improvement of the system", they conclude.