Education department urges confidence in Catalan schools after poor PISA results 

Joan Cuevas, general director for Innovation, Research and Digital Culture at the Education Department, called on the public to trust the Catalan education system after the poor results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). 

Catalonia's results in the 2022 PISA tests fell in all three areas of assessment, putting Catalan students below the Spanish average.    

The education department initially blamed the poor results on an "overrepresentation" of immigrant students, but backtracked on Wednesday, saying the sample was correct. 

Joan Cuevas has clarified the shift in the department's response to the results, saying there was a "discrepancy in the interpretation of the sample". He said the focus is now on "pinpointing" the causes and areas for improvement in the education system.   

Despite the poor results, he sent a message of confidence in the Catalan education system. He stressed that recent competency tests conducted in all schools showed a "turnaround," especially in subjects such as math and science. 

However, he said there was still "a lot of work to be done" in Catalan and Spanish language subjects. 

Cuevas also highlighted the improvement in school failure rates, which have fallen in Catalonia in recent years. He pointed to ongoing efforts to reduce school segregation and stressed the need not only to allocate more resources, but also to design "effective policies".  

"We identify students at risk before they enroll and accompany them to distribute them among all educational centers," he explained. However, he acknowledged that these efforts do not have a "quick" impact on results.  

The PISA 2022 tests assessed the math, science and reading skills of more than 700,000 15-year-old students in 81 countries around the world. In Catalonia, they took place in the spring of 2022.