The Secretary of Educational Policies of the Generalitat, Ignasi Garcia Plata, has attributed the results of Catalonia in the Report of the Program for the Comprehensive Assessment of Students (PISA) 2022, which are below the average of the rest of Spain and countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Mathematics, Reading and Science, to the "overrepresentation" of immigrant students, which represents 24% of the sample. For her part, Government spokesperson Patrícia Plaja has admitted that the data is not "good" but they have been working to reverse it since the beginning of the legislature.
Catalonia - Garcia Plata has stressed - "is one of the territories with the most complex students", related to factors of poverty and high mobility in the case of students who have recently arrived from other countries, which affects their academic results.
He has indicated that, in the 2018 PISA tests, the representation of immigrant students was 14% and that in the 2022 tests it was 24%: "This makes it more difficult to obtain a more accurate diagnosis (of the results), which "We will communicate to PISA for the management of future tests."
"This difficulty in obtaining good educational results has to do with the complexity factor of the educational sector: both in recently arrived students and other factors, such as poverty or mobility," he added.
For his part, the general director of Innovation, Digitalization and Curriculum of the Generalitat, Joan Cuevas, has pointed out that of this 24% of immigrant students (with a father and mother born in a foreign country), there are 14.5% of first generation (students born in another country) and 9.5% second generation (who were already born in Catalonia).
Plata has insisted that the immigrant population is "oversized" in the sample, and has assured that according to data from the Ministry, immigrant students in Catalonia represent 15% of the total.
In addition, he pointed out that the results in PISA "confirm the decline in learning" due to the pandemic and the effects it had on the results, such as changes in group organization and the greater impact on students from more disadvantaged backgrounds.
He has assured that, despite the low results, Catalonia "continues in positions similar to those it had previously", since it continues to be below the OECD average.
To reverse this situation, Plata has assured that the Ministry is taking "medium and long-term measures to improve current results", a downward trend that he remembers was already reflected in the results of the basic skills tests in 2023. .
He has called for "urgently" improving reading skills, and to continue focusing on increasing results in mathematics and written comprehension.
Cuevas has recognized that "there are aspects in the process of learning to read in early childhood that have been lost," and has insisted that the promotion of a taste for reading must continue to be improved.
Regarding concrete measures to boost student results, Plata has stated that work is being done to make teaching more personalized, allocate more resources to centers and reduce ratios: "This will have results, but it will not be We'll see in the short term."
Likewise, the Government spokesperson, Patrícia Plaja, has admitted that the results "are not good, they must be improved and they will be improved." This is what she stated in a press conference after the Executive Council. She believes that the pandemic has impacted academic results and has had consequences at all levels, in the educational field, but also in the individual and psychological sphere of children and young people.
For their part, the spokesperson for the PSC-Units in Parliament, Alícia Romero, and the spokesperson for the Commons, David Cid, have demanded that the Government take measures in educational matters after the poor results of the report.
In a press conference in Parliament, Romero described as "worrying" the situation of inequality in educational matters and, specifically, the high level of school segregation, and demanded that the Government put "measures on top of the table" to "reverse" the results that are "the worst in history.
For his part, Cid has described the situation in education as "practically catastrophic", being on the verge of "a lost decade".
"ERC has managed the Department of Education for five years. This has nothing to do with Junts or another party, but with whoever has responsibility for education in Catalonia," Cid said in another press conference.
Therefore, given this situation, Cid has called to "relaunch, remake and recompose" the national pact for education, so that teaching is "a priority" in the face of the current "educational crisis."
