Between Asturias and Catalonia there is a distance equivalent to a school year in terms of reading comprehension of 10-year-old students, which is what the Pirls 2021 report, which was recently released, measures. Asturias is in the highest range, with an average score of 550 points, above the average for Spain, the EU and the OECD. Catalonia is at the bottom, with 507 points, and has lost 15 since the 2016 edition.
The composition of educational centers and student characteristics differ so much between the two autonomous regions that it is difficult to compare them. However, the Asturian Ministry of Education offers certain clues on which the success of students is based depending on their circumstances.
The Asturian Ministry of Education points out that already in 2016 it had a good score in the Pirls, which confirms the data of the internal evaluations and which is in agreement with the top position in graduation and promotion rates. For example, Asturian early school leaving is 11.5% (Catalan, 16.9%).
Asturias has a million inhabitants, with a very aging population structure. There are only 152,000 children under the age of 18, who study in 525 small educational centers scattered in different councils. The government allocates 17.9% of the budget to education, which means an average of 935 euros per student.
The investment in Catalonia is similar (17.58% of the budget) and the expenditure per student is higher (1,017 euros). But the school population is 1.4 million students distributed in 4,500 educational centers, some of them large. In addition, the social and economic complexity of Catalonia is higher, with 30% of the population at risk of exclusion (25% in Asturias). 16.3% of students are of foreign origin (Africa, Asia, America). In Asturias, the immigrant population rate is 4.8% and the majority come from Latin America and therefore know the school language. In Catalonia, they learn two languages ​​and schooling is in Catalan.
Asturias maintains its capillarity of rural schools, with open centers with 4 students, and, if there is a favorable report from the management, with three. These centers have more extra points in innovation calls. The reversal of the effects of the pandemic was similar in the two autonomies, but in the following years a lot has been invested in specialists in guidance and in therapeutic pedagogy and hearing and language, who have focused their work on the most vulnerable and the most emotionally affected by the pandemic.
As for the reasons why Asturias has obtained this classification in reading comprehension, the department attributes them to “a concatenation of policies and resources sustained over time, especially during the pandemic”, according to sources from the department itself.
Asturias has the lowest pupil-teacher ratios of all the autonomous regions (9.5 pupils per teacher), only exceeded by Extremadura. The ratio in Catalonia rises to 12.3. Likewise, new technologies have been incorporated, with the impetus of European funds, to improve reading skills accompanied by teacher training, since “it’s not just about providing resources but knowing how to use them”.
As pedagogical measures, with the new Lomloe curricula, reading comprehension, oral and written expression are worked on from all primary school areas. “Reading comprehension is a basic skill to develop the rest of it. If you don’t understand what you read, you can’t work on the rest of the skills”, they indicate to the ministry.
On the other hand, Pirls shows a great homogeneity of the Asturian education system, which implies that “no one is left behind”. More than half of the assessed students achieve a “high” or “advanced” level. Almost all centers are above the international average.
The Catalan educational administration, with few students at higher levels and many more at lower levels and with a pronounced drop compared to the 2016 report (15 points), attributes the decline to a set of heterogeneous factors, such as the degree of social complexity (the 30% poverty mentioned), accentuated by the pandemic, and the arrival of immigration from non-Romance languages. The excessive use of screens by children and the abandonment of the reading habit by parents. It is also attributed to the lack of educational policies of the Generalitat for 13 years.
Director General Joan Cuevas justifies the current Department of Education’s actions by pointing out that low skills were already seen in 2010 (with 15% of students already at the low stage). The level was confirmed in the 2016 Pirls, which already placed Catalonia behind Spain, and in the basic skills assessments of the following years.
It wasn’t until March 2022 that the Government of Pere Aragonès promoted, together with Culture, a national reading plan that will be made public this July. Through this plan, school libraries and intensive resources will be provided to 50 centers of high complexity and 200, with less intensity, to strengthen librarian professionals. And schools will be reminded of the half hour of daily reading required by the new primary and secondary school curricula.
Cuevas is confident, however, that the evolution of the same children who took the Pirls test in 2021, who were then in the 4th grade, will be seen in the results of the basic skills of which these same students, already in the 6th grade, have been examined this year and will be known in the summer. Then, the Superior Evaluation Council will prepare a more accurate analysis to identify the causes of the fall.
Likewise, the Barcelona Education Consortium will initiate a pilot plan against school failure, but which will be closely linked to reading comprehension. It is about accelerating the learning of Catalan and Spanish, with intensive training in the language, before students under 14 and 15 go to school.
Although the Department of Education points out exogenous causes to the schools, the same teachers and pedagogues do think that they should reflect on the cause that has prevented the students from getting worse, not in the reading habit or in the taste for reading , but in basic learning, reading comprehension. What has been neglected in the nursery and primary classrooms? How do teachers make sure they don’t leave anyone behind? Under what conditions do they work? What care do children with learning disabilities receive? Do kindergarten and primary school teachers, or even secondary school teachers, convey a passion for reading as they did years ago? do they read Does technology or learning distract from other skills? It is more difficult to learn to read in a non-native language
