If the data on Catalonia in the national PISA 2025 report presented today were representative of the school system, it would allow citizens to be proud of the education their children receive. Catalonia would be at the top of Spain and among the fifteen best countries in the world.
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But the data from Catalonia are not representative of the Catalan system given the high exclusion of students with difficulties and, therefore, are not comparable. Catalonia excluded 23.2% of students, while the OECD standard limit is 5%. In a class of 30 students, this means leaving out between one and two students. In Catalonia, the rate recorded in PISA is equivalent to excluding seven.
The OECD has not included this data in its international report. The Ministry of Education and Vocational Training, on the other hand, has decided to publish it separately with a note warning that it should not be used to make comparisons with other territories or previous editions. The Secretary of State justified this decision since the educational centers conducted the test: “the data are not representative, but they serve the centers that took it.”
The Catalan Agency for Evaluation and Foresight has confirmed that it will not analyze the data nor produce a report on them.
The Evaluation Agency will not analyze Catalan data as they are not representative of the system
But let the data provided by the ministry serve as an aspirational element for a future snapshot of a Catalan system without Photoshop retouching.
With an exclusion rate of 23% of students, mostly with learning or behavioral difficulties, the Catalan students who did take the test scored 502 points in science, well above the scores obtained by students from other communities and in ninth position worldwide.
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In language, the score is 473, below the OECD’s 482, but among the top 15 in the world, and the highest in Spain.
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In mathematics, however, with 474 points, it is above the OECD country average (461) and second in Spain. It is surpassed by the Community of Madrid with 502 points.
In the 51 educational centers selected to take the test, about 2,500 students were preselected. 591 students were excluded from the sample — 23.22% of the students — well above the OECD’s maximum recommended limit of 5%. Most of these exemptions, 493, corresponded to students with cognitive, emotional, or behavioral disabilities. Additionally, 92 students with insufficient proficiency in the test language were excluded, as well as 6 with physical disabilities. This was added to the abstention rate with students who did not show up for the test.
By removing such a high number of students from the test, the sample is not representative of the educational system and does not reliably reflect the entire population of 15-year-old students in Catalonia. For this reason, the OECD considers that the data cannot be used to compare Catalonia’s educational performance with that of other territories.
Catalonia is not the only autonomous community that presented a high exclusion rate. Something similar happened in Murcia, although attenuated in terms of numbers. Murcian teachers excluded 13% of the students selected for the test, well above the 5% standard set by the OECD, but without exceeding 20%.
In this case, the ministry has chosen to include the Murcian data along with those of the other communities, with a note warning that, although these data can be used to make comparisons with other territories and other PISA editions, these comparisons should be taken with caution due to the potential risk of bias.
The internal Catalan evaluations this year have already adhered to the maximum exclusion standard of 5%. Furthermore, the new Agency for Evaluation and Foresight of Education has decided that evaluations will not be census-based (all centers) but by representative sample to help Education decide educational policies. This change has not been well received by principals who feel they are losing a useful management tool that allowed them to know the performance of all students in a cohort and compare it with previous years.
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