Catalonia's results in the 2022 PISA tests have plummeted in all three areas of assessment and place Catalan students below the average for Spain and the OECD countries. These results have generated great controversy - not only because they are academically so bad, but also because of some reactions initially made that were later corrected. After Catalonia's secretary for educational transformation, Ignasi García Plata, attributed Catalonia's poor results to an "over-representation" of immigrant students in the tests, the very next day the education ministry in Barcelona withdrew this and recognized that the sample of Catalan students used for the latest PISA report was representative. This Thursday, a former Catalonia education minister, Irene Rigau, took part in an interview with Catalunya Ràdio and her judgement was another: the problem, she affirmed, is that "the system is disoriented".
Rigau began her exposition of the situation by making it clear that she acknowledged the work done by teachers and emphasized that "they work in a very complex situation" and that the report "does not show whether teachers are working well or badly". According to Rigau, the system is disoriented and she referred, for example, to the fact that it is a mistake "to want to put so many things in the school". The ex-minister spoke of different areas that society assigns to the educators: "Sustainability, climate change, feminism... that is all very good, but it turns out that if we have to keep taking it away from [the time for] language and math lessons, we're not doing well".
An issue that particularly concerns Rigau is when students learn to read and write. The former minister is against the approach of asserting that the child "will learn when he or she wants" and she asserts the need for families to play their part: "Children are happy when they overcome difficulties and move on, not when you let them do what they want with the argument that they should be happy and not frustrated." For this reason, and others, the former head of the Department opts for a change of model and system.
"Divergent" views over interpretation of the sample
For his part, this Thursday, the Catalan education department's director general of innovation, research and digital culture, Joan Cuevas, explained that the change in the messages sent by the department regarding the PISA results is because "basically there was a divergence in the interpretation of the sample". As he told radio station RAC1, "a clear score" was given on Wednesday and now it's time to "focus well" on the causes and points of improvement in the education system. Cuevas explained that it is not only about pouring in more resources, but also about designing "good policies". For example, he sees room for improvement in the tutoring of students with most difficulties and makes a self-criticism over the recruiting of teachers for the centres: "We know that it is not good enough".
The director general stressed the need to have "confidence" in the Catalan education system, although he admitted that complacency is not healthy either. Despite the poor results of PISA, he argued that the latest competence tests done in all schools already indicate that there is beginning to be "a reversal", for example, in mathematics or science. Regarding the issues of Catalan and Spanish language, on the other hand, he said that there is still "a lot of work to do".