The data revealed yesterday in the PISA report on the capabilities of Valencian students in reading, mathematics, and science should set off all alarms in the political, institutional, and educational system. These data add to others such as the high level of school absenteeism in Valencia or the increase in school failure among the youth of our region, one of the highest in Spain. In a mature society with the capacity for consensus, the normal thing would be for these results, which place the Comunitat at the bottom in the three evaluated subjects, to force a calm debate among all political forces, representatives of the educational sector, and specialists to, from the autonomous competencies in Education, observe what is failing and what solutions to adopt. Especially in a world where young people are increasingly slaves to mobile phones, where the authority of teachers has weakened, where many families believe that the school should assume a good part of their education, where there is a shortage of teachers, and where the arrival of students from diverse backgrounds requires integration and reinforcement resources that currently do not exist.
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But instead, the first reaction of some and others has been to blame each other, both in Valencia and in Madrid, where, by the way, the major parties have been unable to agree on a national Education Law since Spain settled into democracy. The parties only play their own interests, almost always focused on electoral strategies, moving away from real problems and applying rules, such as monitoring Valencian teachers, that worsen the problem. Discomforts that become entrenched and end up favoring populist options while traditional parties weaken: look at Europe.
The most serious thing is that there are reasons to think that the PISA report will be much worse in a few years. Education is perhaps the sector most affected by the push of AI both inside and outside the classrooms, alongside a real devaluation of the value that should be given to the effort of learning, understanding, reasoning, and acquiring knowledge. We will end up paying dearly for all these shortcomings, as the deficiencies detected now, if not remedied, will be shortcomings that the men and women of tomorrow will have. Not to mention the confusion of families, and I know many cases, who do not know how to face this new reality.
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Now we also know that our Valencian students are among those who understand reading the worst and among those who obtain the worst results in mathematics and science. And we still do not want to fix it. Are they going to do something?
In the Valencian case, we add another record, but at the bottom. We are the autonomous community that is moving away fastest from the regional per capita income, the one with the worst per capita funding in Spain, the one that accumulates the highest per capita debt, and the one that loses the most talent each year. Now we also know that our students are among those who understand reading the worst and among those who obtain the worst results in mathematics and science. And we still do not want to fix it. Are they going to do something?
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