A lost decade

PISA and the OECD

As its name sug­gests, PISA - the Pro­gramme for In­ter­na­tional Stu­dent As­sess­ment – is an in­ter­na­tional pro­gramme for eval­u­at­ing ed­u­ca­tion sys­tems. It is im­ple­mented every three years among a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple of 15-year-old stu­dents, and or­gan­ised by the OECD. The lat­ter point is im­por­tant, be­cause this in­ter­na­tional body, a mix be­tween the United Na­tions and a club of rich states, the­o­ret­i­cally pro­motes eco­nomic co­op­er­a­tion and de­vel­op­ment.

What does PISA look for? The ho­mogeni­sa­tion of na­tional ed­u­ca­tion sys­tems ac­cord­ing to cer­tain pa­ra­me­ters. This is sim­i­lar to what hap­pened with the Bologna Plan (2008) and uni­ver­sity sys­tems, aimed at mak­ing de­grees in­ter­change­able and ho­molo­gated in a glob­alised econ­omy. And just as Bologna im­posed a uni­ver­sity model in line with the Eng­lish-speak­ing tra­di­tion (flex­i­bil­ity, the ECTS credit sys­tem, in­ter­na­tion­al­i­sa­tion), with PISA, the OECD seeks to im­pose a com­pe­tence-based ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.

Com­pe­tence-based sys­tem

In a glob­alised econ­omy, the busi­ness world is not look­ing for stu­dents with ex­ten­sive knowl­edge, but fu­ture flex­i­ble work­ers adapt­able to con­stant change, pre­pared for a pre­car­i­ous ex­is­tence and the typ­i­cal er­ratic work tra­jec­to­ries typ­i­cal of ne­olib­er­al­ism.

What does PISA do? It de­signs tests ac­cord­ing to com­pe­tences. Tak­ing into ac­count that West­ern ed­u­ca­tion sys­tems draw on dif­fer­ent tra­di­tions, this im­plies that the PISA tests re­ward those sys­tems most prone to cap­i­tal­ism and harm sys­tems that place more weight on the­ory. It is like a group of Olympic ath­letes being forced to play bas­ket­ball. Being an agile gym­nast, tough long-dis­tance run­ner or ex­pe­ri­enced sailor has no value: being two me­tres tall will al­ways mean play­ing with an ad­van­tage. In other words, PISA com­pares ap­ples to or­anges. A bet­ter or worse rank­ing says noth­ing about whether the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem in the Nether­lands is bet­ter than that of Por­tu­gal or Italy, but rather that char­ac­ter­is­tics and tra­di­tions de­ter­mine its clas­si­fi­ca­tion. Also, the score out of 500 max­imises dif­fer­ences. If it were out of 100, the re­sults would be less spec­tac­u­lar.

The com­pe­tence para­dox

Im­ple­ment­ing the changes “ad­vised” by the OECD does not nec­es­sar­ily trans­late into im­prove­ments ei­ther. It often im­plies the op­po­site, in fact. An ex­am­ple of this is what has hap­pened with Swe­den and Fin­land. The for­mer im­ple­mented re­forms in line with the de­mands of in­ter­na­tional or­gan­i­sa­tions through­out the 1980s and 1990s: flex­i­ble cur­ric­ula, mak­ing teach­ers pri­vate em­ploy­ees, ex­per­i­ment­ing with new, more ac­tive method­olo­gies and pro­mot­ing “free” schools (pri­vate schools sup­ported by pub­lic funds). The re­sults have been cat­a­strophic. They have fallen from 516 points (2000) to 487 (2022) in read­ing; from ninth to nine­teenth po­si­tion. Swe­den is the rich­est coun­try in Scan­di­navia and in­vested a lot of re­sources for worse re­sults. Fin­land, which is the poor­est, with a very tra­di­tional sys­tem, was at the top of the clas­si­fi­ca­tion for many years (546 points in 2000, first; 520 points in 2018, sev­enth). From the mo­ment it began to im­ple­ment re­forms im­i­tat­ing its neigh­bour, its scores fell (490 points in 2022, 17nth). Fin­land al­ways had a very tra­di­tional, mem­ory-based sys­tem, or­derly and silent class­rooms, few hours of class, a lot of home­work and a rev­er­en­tial re­spect for teach­ers. On the other hand, the Asian coun­tries that stand out in the clas­si­fi­ca­tion (Sin­ga­pore, Japan, Korea) are ed­u­ca­tion sys­tems that re­sem­ble, in struc­ture and form, the Eu­ro­pean sys­tems of 50 years ago. In other words, with PISA we are wit­ness­ing the para­dox that the best way to have a good com­mand of com­pe­tences is to have cur­ric­ula based on knowl­edge and tra­di­tional method­olo­gies. This, com­bined with the often bru­tal pres­sure from fam­i­lies put on stu­dents.

PISA and the Cata­lans

Does all this mean that PISA is use­less? No. Al­though it is nei­ther use­ful nor de­sir­able to com­pare our­selves with Fin­land or Sin­ga­pore, eight edi­tions and twenty-two years pro­vide use­ful data to study the evo­lu­tion of this coun­try, or com­pare with the au­tonomous re­gions with which we share a sys­tem and tra­di­tions.

In fact, this work is car­ried out, with even more data and cen­sus tests, and an­nu­ally, by the Higher Coun­cil for the Eval­u­a­tion of the Ed­u­ca­tion Sys­tem (CSASE): the so-called “basic com­pe­tences tests”. And here, the news is not good. In the first 15 years of the cen­tury, Cat­alo­nia was in the upper mid­dle part of the 17 au­tonomous re­gions. This year it has ex­pe­ri­enced an abrupt fall and is now in a dra­matic sit­u­a­tion. The fact is that with re­spect to Spain, we are com­par­ing ap­ples with ap­ples: the same ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, leg­is­la­tion, cur­ricu­lum, teach­ing staff, ini­tial train­ing, tra­di­tions and sim­i­lar ped­a­gog­i­cal cul­ture.

The Cata­lan ex­cep­tion

When analysing a sit­u­a­tion like this, it is use­ful to iso­late those fac­tors that dif­fer­en­ti­ate us from other au­tonomous re­gions with very sim­i­lar char­ac­ter­is­tics. Once the re­sults of the tests were made pub­lic, ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cials at­trib­uted the poor out­comes to the pres­ence of for­eign stu­dents. The truth is that in the 2019-2020 school year (the last year for which Idescat pub­lished data), if we re­move Eu­ro­pean stu­dents, we are left with 155,000 stu­dents out of 1,620,743 at all lev­els of ed­u­ca­tion in state and pri­vate schools (9.6%). In 2014-15, there were 129,000 non-Eu­ro­peans out of 1,549,729, or 8.3%. In other words, there has been no ex­treme so­ciode­mo­graphic evo­lu­tion in this re­gard. This can­not ex­plain why in this pe­riod Cat­alo­nia has gone from sev­enth out of nine­teen, with 500 points in read­ing com­pre­hen­sion, to sev­en­teenth, with 462 points. On the other hand, the so­ciode­mo­graphic com­po­si­tion of Cat­alo­nia is not very dif­fer­ent from that of Va­len­cia (ninth in 2015 and 2022) or the Balearic Is­lands (14th in 2015 and 10th in 2022). The sec­ond ex­cuse has been the pan­demic. Cat­alo­nia closed schools for 45 days, half the av­er­age of OECD coun­tries and the same as the Span­ish au­tonomous re­gions. So no ex­cuses there ei­ther.

So what fac­tors can ex­plain the dis­as­ter? The first, that start­ing in 2013, the Cata­lan De­part­ment of Ed­u­ca­tion pub­lished a de­cree that al­lows state schools to choose their own teach­ers. This led to a spi­ral of cor­rup­tion and nepo­tism in which the most suit­able pro­fes­sional is not cho­sen, but the per­son clos­est to the school man­age­ment or the one least likely to chal­lenge its de­ci­sions.

The sec­ond, es­pe­cially since 2016, is the emer­gence of the Es­cola Nova 21 pro­ject, pro­moted by var­i­ous en­ti­ties linked to the fi­nan­cial and busi­ness sec­tor, which has been a boost for “ed­u­ca­tional in­no­va­tion” based on un­con­ven­tional method­olo­gies: pro­ject work, au­ton­omy pro­jects, in­ten­sive dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion and a se­ries of dis­rup­tive el­e­ments that have led to ped­a­gog­i­cal chaos in a large num­ber of schools.

The third is ini­tial teacher train­ing – es­pe­cially the teach­ing de­gree – which is in­ef­fec­tive. The cur­ric­ula, based on uni­ver­sity au­ton­omy and con­t­a­m­i­na­tion by new holis­tic and in­no­v­a­tive ped­a­go­gies, have re­sulted in a re­duc­tion of the most el­e­men­tary core con­tents and their re­place­ment by modes such as emo­tional ed­u­ca­tion, mul­ti­ple in­tel­li­gences, pos­i­tive psy­chol­ogy and other aca­d­e­m­i­cally ques­tioned sub­jects.

The fourth is the in­ef­fec­tive­ness of the CSASE it­self, which seems to have given up on as­sess­ing these ac­cel­er­ated changes.

In the coun­try’s ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, then, a chain of wrong de­ci­sions made by a gen­er­a­tion of un­suit­able and ir­re­spon­si­ble peo­ple has led to a lost decade. And with­out a change of di­rec­tion, we ap­pear doomed to lose more.