The results of the basic skills tests for the 2022-2023 academic year show an improvement in the average score in English language and mathematics among students in sixth grade and fourth grade ESO, while they decrease in Catalan and Spanish.
This is clear from the document ‘Census Evaluations of Basic Competencies for the 2022-2023 academic year’, which the Higher Council for Evaluation of the Educational System and the Department of Education have presented this Wednesday.
At a press conference, the president of the Higher Council for Evaluation of the Educational System, Carles Vega, and the Secretary of Educational Transformation, Ignasi García Plata, congratulated themselves on the fact that the results of both the sixth year of primary school and the fourth year of ESO “show a trend of upward reversal of the results”, although they have recognized that “they are still far from being the desired ones”.
Both have stressed that Catalonia is, after the pandemic, the “only territory in Spain” and “one of the few in Europe” that evaluates the level of students from a diagnostic point.
The competency tests, which 67,022 sixth grade students and another 68,578 fourth year ESO students underwent last May, evaluate the basic knowledge that the student must have acquired upon finishing compulsory secondary education in the Catalan language, the Spanish language , English language, mathematics and scientific knowledge.
The test that assesses basic skills in scientific and technological knowledge in the fourth year of ESO was implemented in 2016 and since then it is the subject where students have obtained the best results, achieving 68.7 points, while last year they were 63.6 and in 2016 they had obtained 67.2.
Among these students, the results in the Spanish language drop from 75.2 to 71.6 points and are the worst since 2014, and those in the Catalan language also drop by two points, going from the 74.1 obtained in the previous edition to the 72.3 of this, the lowest of the entire historical series.
Despite the improvement in mathematics among fourth-year ESO students, the study reveals that only 15.5% are at a high level, while last year it was 17.7% and in 2021 it was 20.3%. . Of these students, 24.4% obtained low results this year, in 2022 they were 23.5% and 19.9% ??in 2021
The improvement in the English language is five points, going from 68.4 in 2022 to 73.9 this year, a level similar to that of 2019, when students obtained 74.1 points.
Sixth grade students also improve in English language, going from 76.9 points last year to 77.8 this year, and in mathematics, where they obtain 73.6 points compared to the previous 71.7, but still They are far from the 81 obtained nine years ago.
In Catalan, sixth grade students improve by two tenths, going from 72.5 to 72.7 points, an improvement that Carlos Vega has not considered “significant”, and in Spanish they drop from 74 to 72.1.
Students in the fourth year of ESO and the sixth year of primary school obtain worse results in written expression in Spanish and Catalan than in reading and oral comprehension (a competence that has only been evaluated in primary school).
Regarding the results of Catalan, the secretary said that “it is necessary for Catalan to have more strength in the centers to achieve good linguistic competence in a significant way, or the level of oral competence will become increasingly worse.”
For this reason, he has indicated that the department “will reinforce programs to improve the use of the Catalan language in educational centers”, since the objective is for students to “finish compulsory education with full command” of Catalan, Spanish and a foreign language. .
In addition to the consequences derived from the pandemic, both officials have attributed the results to the “high complexity” of the Catalan territory, since “it is the second territory, above Andalusia”, with “more vulnerable students.”
