The Evaluation Agency defends 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 in the PISA tests continues to drag on. After the FECC, which brings together two-thirds of state-subsidized schools, requested that the end-of-stage tests –the former basic competencies– be performed again in all schools and institutes, this Friday the Agency for the Evaluation and Prospective of Education (APE) issued a statement arguing that it already guarantees enough data to 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 census-based, 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 analyses".

In this sense, they argue that they are "the public and independent body in charge of ensuring the quality and rigor of the evaluations of the educational 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 carried out 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 that one might intend to make with the collected data will not be representative of the reality of learning in the Catalan educational system".

Finally, the Agency insists that they will maintain "a transparency policy that will lead to publishing in open access the microdata of their own studies and of 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 that we will have managed, their methodological approach and their implications for the improvement of the system", they conclude.