Next year universities will receive the students who took the 2025 PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) and who showed a significant drop in performance in reading, mathematics, and science, losing between one and one and a half school years compared to young people three years older than them.
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There is an additional circumstance that middle-class young people, generally more inclined to continue their studies at university, lose 33 points in reading compared to the previous PISA edition, 24.2 in mathematics, and 12 in science. The OECD estimates that one academic year equals 20 points.
“We are not going to lower the level,” categorically states the vice-rector of academic policy at the largest public Catalan university, the UB. For Pilar Delgado, the results of the OECD report released on Tuesday are a new wake-up call about the country’s educational quality, indicating the need to strengthen skills.
“Universities cannot reverse what has not been done in earlier stages, but we have the responsibility to provide tools so that they acquire university competencies during their studies without lowering the level of demand,” Delgado assures. Understanding complex texts, arguing solidly, analyzing with data, or writing rigorously are “university competencies.”
The UB is developing micro-credentials to improve these and other competencies, as well as strengthening tutoring and first-year student orientations. “As a university, we can contribute by providing knowledge and research on how to reverse the PISA trend,” says the vice-rector.
The low level is not new. This and other universities have deployed strategies to recover or improve lost competencies. Pablo Pareja, deputy vice-rector to the rector of the UPF, is optimistic. He admits the results are bad, although more research into the causes is needed. “We have to help students learn solid knowledge. There is room for improvement and they have time to do it,” he states.
The UB promotes a micro-credential in communication and strengthens mentoring and new orientations
The Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) has been combating for years the clash between high school students’ knowledge and the academic demands of their degree. It does not want to risk the prestige of the quality of its degrees and, at the same time, wants to help students who come with deficiencies. Many of these end up enrolling in academies to overcome difficulties in class.
However, the UPC offers its new students every year the Course 0, review classes in mathematics, physics, and chemistry before the course starts to ensure they reach a minimum level. It used to be to prevent dropout. Now “a good student comes to us,” says Mª José Jiménez, academic and student vice-rector of the UPC. The cutoff grades select the most studious. “As a teacher, you adapt to the group and support the one who needs it most,” she adds.
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Reading is the main alarm signal in PISA. In the evaluations of Spanish youth, also worldwide, signs of less deep reading are seen, they respond hastily and have difficulties maintaining attention and working with complex information. Strong reading competence affects learning in all subjects.
PISA reveals that “there is a real difficulty in the ability and willingness to read in a sustained, attentive, and demanding way,” says Elena Sintes, research project director at Fundació Equitat.org. There is also a lack of persistence in difficult tasks and worse results in skills that require interpreting, connecting information, and thinking critically. This deterioration coincides with a shift to reading short and fragmented texts.
According to experts, the conditions that make deep reading possible must be rebuilt: protected times to work on long and complex texts in all subjects, regular support, fewer interruptions and distractions. “The challenge is not to read more but to train the ability to read deeply,” agrees Sintes.
At the UPC, Course 0 is offered, a review of mathematics, physics, and chemistry before the course starts
In England, the Administration implemented in 2012 a language intervention plan from early childhood to secondary education that involves the development of phonics from the first years, with an early detection program for difficulties, an explicit approach to reading comprehension, emphasizing vocabulary, and the assumption of responsibility for this issue by all teachers. All this accompanied by a plan for reading for pleasure. This set of initiatives has borne fruit in light of PISA: 80% of English students have reached reading level 2 (the threshold PISA considers minimum competence), while the OECD average is 69%. Spain is at 67%.
However, the English initiatives have extended to university. Several universities offer their students classes in reading resilience to help them read entire books and understand long and complex texts. These courses are offered, surprisingly, in philology faculties where students enroll due to their love of reading.
These university initiatives aim to improve some competencies that were previously taken for granted and that students have not acquired in secondary school. There remain young people who do not opt for a university degree but a technical one. Or who go to work without training.
At the end of compulsory secondary education, approximately two out of three young people choose to enroll in high school and about one in three in intermediate vocational training. After finishing high school, 63% start university studies, 23% a higher vocational training cycle, and the rest do not continue their studies.
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