The poor PISA results in Catalonia have fallen like a bomb, and the explanation by Educació attributing the cause of the disaster to immigration has raised a political cloud.
In 2015, Catalan students led Spain in mathematics, reading and science, achieving scores of 500 or more points. Now they are in the low range, with 464 points in math, 462 in reading and 477 in science.
In these seven pre- and post-pandemic years, the equivalent of almost two courses in reading, and a course and a half in math and science, have been lost.
The department tried to downplay the importance of the data, arguing that internal and external evaluations were already indicating the students' academic decline. Therefore, they agreed, that students are doing poorly is not new information.
When putting the causes in context, they alluded to the “high social and educational complexity” of this community, which implies the arrival of a “significant percentage” of students throughout the course, “well above the averages for Spain, Europe and the OECD”, according to the secretary, Ignasi Garcia Plata. He also criticized that the OECD sample shows an overrepresentation of immigration, which would explain part of the drop, since, as PISA points out, low results are correlated with socioeconomic vulnerability. “In 2018 it was 14% and now it is 24%,” he said.
Catalonia “is one of the territories with the highest complexity” in terms of “levels of poverty, incorporation of students throughout their schooling and the high mobility of many of them”, which causes them “to be unable to complete a educational cycle with the same opportunities as others.”
The report indeed states that Melilla (26%), Catalonia (24%) and the Balearic Islands (21%) concentrate the highest proportion of immigrant students. The secretary of state, José Manuel Bar, also related the drop in the Basque Country and Catalonia to the rate of immigration and poverty.
Political parties and unions considered it intolerable that the Government was focusing on immigration and demanded a plan to reverse this situation. For the secretary of the PSC, Salvador Illa, this is the result of ten years of “not being focused” on the real problems of citizens. “Without water, in the dark and the children don't know how to read, write or add,” he said. JxCat announced that it will request the appearance of Minister Anna Simó. As for the commons, they pointed out that this was “a lost decade.” And they asked to “relaunch, remake and recompose” the national pact for education so that teaching is “a priority.”
PP and Vox saw xenophobic undertones in the explanation of Education and blamed the educational crisis on linguistic immersion.
