The OECD's recipe for the Catalan school: teaching incentives, power for principals and "coherent" evaluation

BarcelonaWith two months left until the results of a new PISA report are known – the exams that sounded the alarm bells about the level of Catalan students in 2023 – the OECD presented its analysis of the Catalan educational system this Monday. A report that Salvador Illa's government asked the OECD a year and a half ago with the aim of finding the longed-for recipe to improve educational results. Although the recipe is new, the ingredients are well-known: more inclusion of diversity within the classroom, incentives in the teaching career, strengthening of the role of management, and a "coherent" and aligned evaluation.

The document that the international organization has delivered to the Government, and which is titled Improvement of learning outcomes in Catalonia,focuses mainly on equity and inclusion; teachers and school leadership; assessment and governance, and funding. The OECD breaks down strengths and weaknesses of each of these points and makes a series of recommendations.

Inclusion

Regarding equity and inclusion, the report points out that Catalan schools "operate in an increasingly diverse demographic, social, and linguistic environment". A reality that creates "new opportunities and demands for schools". Furthermore, the OECD also highlights "persistent socioeconomic inequalities, recent evidence of declining learning outcomes, and growing disparities". Faced with this scenario, it recommends, among other things, creating a "coherent support system" to implement inclusive education, within which "constant access to emotional and psychological support within schools" should be included, in addition to strengthening the early identification of students' needs.

It also proposes strengthening measures to combat school segregation through planning policies and making good use of reserved places, and calls for strengthening the capacity of teachers and directors to implement inclusive practices in the classroom. "More emphasis should be placed on translating political expectations into concrete teaching practices," it assures in the report.

Teachers

The OECD values the "strong professional commitment of teachers to equity and inclusion" and assures that teachers "have a degree of pedagogical autonomy that favors the adaptation of instruction to different classroom contexts". However, it also warns that there are several shortcomings that "can limit professional commitment from translating into sustained improvements in the quality of teaching".

In this regard, international experts propose a dozen measures concerning teachers and school and institute principals, among which is the need to define common standards to guide the teaching profession "by aligning initial teacher training, evaluation, and professional learning".

They also urge Catalonia to develop a "more attractive professional teaching structure that aligns with the system's priorities". They explain that this structure should offer clearer progression paths and recognize expertise by aligning incentives with system priorities. In addition, they also propose expanding the roles of inclusion and pedagogy specialists and the possibility of creating a "senior teacher" category linked to voluntary evaluation.

As several experts have already warned, the OECD also proposes to strengthen initial teacher training "by making its content more relevant, reinforcing practical training, and ensuring adequate quality". It also refers to a much-reported problem among teachers and principals: it is necessary to "reduce the administrative burden on teachers and principals so that they can dedicate more time to tasks with greater impact and focused on pedagogy".

Directors

Regarding school management, the international organization's document warns that pedagogical leadership in schools must be improved. In this regard, it assures that it is necessary to "support" management teams by giving them time and space to organize and focus on teaching.

Furthermore, the OECD also addresses one of the elephants in the room of the Catalan system: the role of management in personnel selection. The organization assures that it is necessary to "strengthen the role of school principals in teacher assignment processes" to provide stability to the system. "Greater involvement of management teams in personnel decisions would help to adapt teacher profiles to the school's needs, especially in contexts of high complexity," it argues. It should be noted that Catalonia has reduced to a minimum the cases in which a principal can conduct interviews to choose which teacher profile will work at the center they manage. An action that has been heavily criticized by school principals.

Evaluation

Finally, the OECD also urges Catalonia to build a "coherent" evaluation system. The analysis assures that it is necessary to "clarify the purposes" of the key components of the system (student assessment, school evaluation, monitoring and inspection of the system) in order to improve. It points out that it is necessary to integrate "evaluation into habitual professional practice" and also to "improve the accessibility and communication of evaluation results" in general.

In this section, the international body also focuses on the role that the new Catalan Evaluation Agency should play. It explains that initially it is necessary to "prioritize" immediate actions so that the agency generates an impact. In this regard, it points out that a "key priority" must be to strengthen the role of student assessment with the "improvement of its methodological quality, the presentation of reports and its pedagogical use". Furthermore, it also calls for guaranteeing the independence of the agency so that it is not affected by the change of political cycles.