PISA: Spanish Students Lag Behind by a Decade

The Decline of Spanish Education: A Decade Lost

The results of the latest PISA report have once again focused attention on Spanish education. Today's students are nearly a year behind their counterparts from ten years ago. The question remains what has changed to reach this point. The answers point to a cocktail of structural factors that go beyond the pandemic or digitalization.

Structural Causes: Ratios, Reforms, and Mobile Phones

The Spanish education system suffers from deep-seated problems. Class sizes remain high: 20 students per class in early childhood and 25 in primary school, compared to the benchmarks of 6-8 and 10-12 seen in other developed countries. Furthermore, over four decades, eight educational reforms have taken place, each with its own law and approach, yet none has managed to establish a stable model.

To this are added more recent factors. The widespread use of mobile phones among students has been linked to reduced attention spans and a drop in reading physical books. Some argue that the education system is not a friend to be reformed, but an enemy to be defeated. The phrase is harsh, but it reflects a growing body of opinion.

The Case of Navarra and the Socioeconomic Gap

The analysis of the decline in Navarra, one of the communities with the poorest results, points to several factors: an increase in immigrant students, socioeconomic differences, loss of performance in the public network, and regression in reading comprehension. These are structural problems that cannot be fixed with quick patches.

The socioeconomic gap is particularly worrying. In Germany, the difference in science between non-immigrant and immigrant students reaches 125 points, compared to the OECD average of 85. This is a striking statistic: the problem is not solely Spanish, but here it is exacerbated by a system that has undergone eight reforms in four decades without a clear direction.