Latest Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) report It was released in December last yearIt created an educational earthquake. The results revealed a sharp decline in the reading and mathematics comprehension abilities of Spanish students. The bad consolation that remained for the educational community was that this setback was widespread in almost the entire West. So much so that internationally standard models, such as Germany or Finland, have suffered setbacks almost three times more severe than Spain.
Children almost everywhere in the world today, with the exception of isolated cases such as Turkey, Chile or Sweden – each for their own reasons – are worse at doing arithmetic or understanding text than their counterparts a decade ago. The grades of Spanish students, without being the most famous debacle, have exposed the disgrace of the educational system and now the government is seeking… These will be corrected and more resources will be pumped into strengthening these core competencies.
Over the past decade, Spanish students have fallen by almost a school year in reading ability and half a year in mathematics. They only improved in scientific knowledge, where the grade improvement was nominal.
Specifically, between 2012 and 2022, Spanish students lost 14 points in reading comprehension, 11 points in mathematics, and 12 points in science. In the case of Catalonia, the setback was more severe in the three specializations, while students lost 24 points in mathematics, 38 in reading comprehension, and 15 in science. According to the PISA scale, a total of 20 points is equivalent to one year of study.
The 2022 results are marked by the effects of the pandemic and the obstacles it imposes on academic practice and the normal functioning of classrooms. However, experts agree that this exacerbated, rather than provoked, the recessionary dynamic, which had already been brewing since the 2012 results. The cuts in public spending that public schools and institutes suffered at that time hampered the performance and opportunities of students, who since Then it did not improve, on the contrary, in terms of skills.
Eco mode is key
One of the arguments used by the Catalan government to justify the poor results was the “overrepresentation” of the population of immigrant origin. This is the thesis that a report prepared by Esade and Save the Children was responsible for refuting, considering that what really matters is the economic factor. This has a much greater importance in the grades students get, whether they are of immigrant origin or not.
According to this study, a student born abroad or of foreign parents scores on average 32.5 points lower in mathematics than a nonimmigrant (just over a year and a half behind). However, this gap is reduced to 6.6 points if the effect of economic inequality is removed from the equation.
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