The change in social composition in Catalonia is more evident in schools than anywhere else. The PISA report released this week has shed media light on this phenomenon: one in four students comes from another country or their parents have a migrant background. In general terms, they are more vulnerable children and have worse academic performance. The expectation of educational success for these students, who are contributing to rejuvenating the Catalan population, forces us to review current educational policies.
“If the most vulnerable students receive more support to compensate for their initial disadvantage,” said Daniel Salinas, principal analyst for the PISA report in Spain, “it is very possible that their educational results will improve.” And if they improve, he continued, society will gain educated citizens, qualified workers with the added bonus of their multiculturalism, polyglots and rooted in the country.
Catalonia has, according to the PISA report, a 24% population of migrant origin, well above the 15% in Spain (3 points higher than 10 years ago) and far from the 5% in communities like Galicia. Likewise, 30% of the school population is in poverty, which is often linked to immigrants, but not always.
This population is the result of the waves of immigrants at the beginning of the century, the recent arrivals of adolescents, as well as the children of settled immigrants. “The number of children born to Catalan women is declining while the fertility rate of mothers of foreign origin is higher. The second generation is coming of age,” explains Lucas Gortázar, EsadeEcPol analyst.
In practically all countries there are differences between the performance of native and foreign students, in favor of the former. Except in Canada and Australia, where the gap is almost non-existent. In the mathematics test, for example, native 15-year-old students obtain an OECD score of 479; foreigners, 448. In the European Union this difference is 43 points (more than two courses), and in Spain, 33 points. In reading and science, the differences range between 30 and 40 points, being higher in all developed countries. In poverty rates, the gap is 102 in the EU and 86 in Spain.
They generally start from a disadvantaged position for three reasons, as Gortázar lists. Their economic and social situation, with unemployment, precarious jobs and poverty. Due to the cultural capital of the family and having a language different from the one used at school. And because they come without a social network.
“Immigrant children enrolled in school at 2 or 3 years old obtain results equivalent to those born in the country when they finish ESO,” says former councilor Irene Rigau, “not so for those who integrate at 10 years old.” Furthermore, according to PISA, both immigrant students and those whose families are low-income have higher rates of segregation, suffer more bullying from their peers, more anxiety about mathematics (drastically reduces performance), lower emotional well-being, and express a lower feeling of belonging to the school. “And in their centers there are fewer human and material resources,” adds Salinas.
Despite these barriers, there are students who are called “resilient” who, despite everything, perform at high levels in the competitions. On the OECD average they are 10%. In Spain as a whole they rise to 12%.
In Catalonia, the weight of immigration and poverty is greater than the rest of the peninsula. Of the 5.5 million foreigners in Spain, 1.27 live in Catalonia (data from 2022). Of these, just over half a million come from the African and Asian continents, which is why they speak a language other than the official ones. And 360,000 from America, especially from the southern cone.
For these students, as reflected by the former president of the Consell Superior d'Avaluació, Joan Mateo, the pandemic had more acute effects because during the confinements they stopped being in contact with Catalan, the language in which they later responded in PISA. “For this reason, reading is the competition that drops the most in PISA 2022, almost 40 points compared to 2015,” he points out. The drop in mathematics was 31 points.
“This phenomenon that is now manifesting in Catalonia will grow and spread to the rest of Spain, so we must assume that, if we do not act before, it will have an impact on overall Spanish educational results in the future,” he warns. Gortazar.
