The Generalitat has decided to open proceedings against three people – two officials and a senior executive – responsible for organizing and supervising the latest edition of the PISA test, held in the early months of 2025, and due to its poor execution Catalonia has been excluded from the international comparison. Councillor Esther Niubó has also just announced the dismissal of the Secretary General of Education, Teresa Sambola, “to open a new chapter.”
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The Government commissioned this investigation last April after learning that Catalonia’s data would not be considered valid in the world’s largest international assessment for having excluded 23% of students, a figure far above the 5% limit. The sample is not representative of the Catalan school system and invalidates any comparison with other territories.
The person responsible for Education in Catalonia has not given the names of the three people in charge of organizing the tests as they are under administrative investigation. However, she has justified the dismissal of the Secretary General, Teresa Sambola.
The political and executive officials are no longer in the department
The failures in execution occurred at all stages of the process. And this despite the fact that in the previous edition of PISA, presented in 2023, there was already a media uproar because the Consell Superior d’Avaluació questioned the composition of the sample due to the drop in results of Catalan students..
From the initial instructions to school management, the high exclusion of students, the lack of validation by the evaluation council, student abstention from the test, and non-participation in recovery sessions.
As if that were not enough, the Consell d’Avaluació did not react when the company 2 E Estudios y Evaluaciones, certified by the OECD for test coverage, alerted during the exam period about the exemptions that were occurring, as recorded in the repository of emails exchanged with the department.
But the fiasco is not only attributable to the Consell d’Avaluació, it is also to the Ministry of Education and the National Institute of Educational Statistics (INEE). This company also alerted a ministry technician who did not inform his superiors of the facts, which could have prevented the situation, according to ministry sources.
The department has not revealed the names of the people now under investigation who, if found responsible, will face serious sanctions. However, according to La Vanguardia, the Consell Superior d’Avaluació, the body responsible for implementing the test in Catalonia, had an executive secretary in charge and several technicians, one of them a teacher on secondment, with direct functions over the international tests. He is currently on sick leave.
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The executive secretary was a solfège teacher with a law degree who worked as a career counselor and became head of studies at the Escola del Treball, a vocational training center in Barcelona. In 2022 she made an important professional and salary leap and joined the Consell Superior d’Avaluació as executive secretary (with an A position, level 27). Last March she left the department and returned to her counseling position at her former educational center.
When she was appointed secretary at the Consell, the president was Carles Vega, a language teacher, former ERC councilor in Lleida, and former director of territorial services. He was appointed in September 2021 by then-councillor Josep Gonzàlez-Cambray, also a teacher in Lleida.
Vega was dismissed by Councillor Anna Simó in January 2024, precisely for questioning the student sample of the PISA 2022 report and attributing the poor results to the immigrant population. The President of the Generalitat himself, Pere Aragonès, had to deny this version within hours.
Simó did not appoint anyone to replace him as she had already launched the decree creating the Agència d’Avaluació i Prospecció, an organization with greater structure, funding, and professionals than the Consell d’Avaluació. The presidency of the Consell was temporarily assumed by the Curriculum Directorate under the then director general.
In September 2024 the socialists took over the department and immediately resumed the decree establishing the agency, which took, as is usual for a decree, ten months to be approved.
Precisely during those ten months the 2025 PISA tests were held. There is no specific president for the council, which depends on the Curriculum Directorate led by Mercè Andreu, under the responsibility of the Secretary of Educational Improvements, with Josefa Beltrán, better known as Pepín, in charge. The Curriculum Directorate was at that time dealing with the controversial merger of sciences in high school that sparked controversy in the educational sector.
Neither of the two officials from that time are still in the department. Both left their positions in October 2025, one year after being appointed, six months after the tests were held, and six months before the fiasco alerted by the OECD became known. Andreu returned to teaching at a school and Beltrán went to take up the position of Education Counselor at the Spanish Ministry of Education in Bulgaria.
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