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Why tomorrow’s PISA report matters for Spain’s education system

From La Vanguardia · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

Explainer Named sources New plan
  • The OECD’s 2025 PISA results, covering 91 countries including Spain, are due to be released at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow.
  • The report could indicate whether Spain’s declining performance since 2018 has continued or begun to turn around after the pandemic.
  • Catalonia will be excluded from international comparisons after schools omitted 23% of sampled students, above the OECD’s recommended 5% threshold.

At 9:30 tomorrow morning, the OECD will publish the 2025 results of PISA, the world’s largest international assessment of education. Ninety-one countries are taking part, including Spain, where the figures are expected to clarify whether the education system’s decline has continued or begun to reverse.

Spain’s performance fell in PISA 2022 as the COVID-19 pandemic affected children’s learning and emotional wellbeing across participating countries. The decline in Spain was less severe than in other OECD countries, a difference linked in the article to the country’s shorter lockdown period. But Spain has lost points in all three tested subjects since 2018. In mathematics and reading, it stood at roughly the level of Germany, France, Portugal and Norway.

This time, the pandemic cannot be given the same weight in explaining the results. Catalonia, however, will not appear in the international comparison. Its sample was altered after education centres excluded 23% of students because they believed the pupils were not prepared to take the test. The reasons cited included learning difficulties and behavioural problems. The OECD recommends keeping exclusions below 5%. Only five centres met that threshold, while about 10 exceeded 40%.

alarming

· Isabel Díaz AyusoThe Madrid regional president used the term to preview possible results in the new PISA edition.

The coming figures have already entered Spain’s political debate. Madrid regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso predicted “alarming” results and linked any poor indicators to the Lomloe education law and its “ideology”. Castilla-La Mancha president Emiliano García-Page offered the opposite forecast, saying his region would be “very well positioned”.

Spain recorded its worst PISA results in the 2023 report, based on tests taken the previous year, since the assessment began in 2000. Spanish students in the final year of compulsory secondary education scored 473 in mathematics, eight points below 2018, and 474 in reading, three points lower. The article’s text ends while reporting the science result.

very well positioned

· Emiliano García-PageThe Castilla-La Mancha president predicted his region would perform strongly in the report.
About this summary

Originally published by La Vanguardia in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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