Two weeks after learning the results of the PISA 2022 report, which has triggered an educational emergency in Catalonia, the Government and parliamentary political forces met yesterday at the Palau de la Generalitat at the proposal of President Pere Aragonès and agreed the creation of a committee of experts, made up of professionals from the educational community, to draw up a work plan in a short period of time. The aim is for educational actions to be finalized before March in order to implement them already in the next school year 2024-2025.
The Minister of Education, Anna Simó, explained after a meeting of more than two hours that the committee will consist of 15 people and that they wanted them to be experts and actors in the educational community. The profiles were agreed yesterday, but the names will be known soon. The committee of experts will consist of a coordinator who will lead the group and work on the data and analyses; two active teachers for the last five years, four school directors, proposed by the Central Board of Directors; and three representatives of educational organizations (Associació Rosa Sensat, Federation of Pedagogical Renewal Movements of Catalonia and Official College of Doctors and Graduates in Philosophy and Letters and Sciences). A representative of the Faculty of Education, three retired members of the educational community (inspection, teachers, directors), a representative of the families and another from the local world will just form the group. The composition of the committee members will be balanced between the different educational stages (primary, ESO and post-compulsory) and in terms of the diversity of disciplines.
He will commit to having a plan of proposals with two classes of contributions by the end of February. First, measures for the 2024-2025 academic year. Second, needs and priorities in the medium and long term. So, the working group will have an intensive calendar: it will be set up at the beginning of January. At the end of the month, he will present the work lines to the parliamentary groups and they will have two more meetings in February with the political parties that will follow them up.
The conclusions of the work will be presented to the Consell Escolar de Catalunya (which, if the decree relating to its constitution is approved today, will be called the Consell Educatiu de Catalunya). There are representatives of trade unions, universities, pedagogues, etc., who, according to Simó, can enrich the document.
The minister was confident that the measure, which has obtained the support of all parties, will help the education system to reverse the poor results of Catalan students reflected in the basic skills tests and PISA, as well as in other assessments.
The socialist Esther Niubó assessed very positively that the committee of experts arises from the educational community, from teachers “in the classroom”, principals, inspectors and pedagogical associations who must “respond to the educational emergency ”, with concrete measures that require a calendar, and recover the prestige of the system.
Instead, the rest of the opposition charged against the Government. Albert Batet, for Junts, a party that brought a document drawn up with twenty proposals, including that of the committee of experts, highlighted the lack of leadership of the current Executive and its role when it promoted the monograph on education in June, after the school dropout data, and the contributions to the debate.
JxCat proposed to abandon the desire to “transform the system to transform it”, which “has only served to make it worse”, and to recover the values ??of the Catalan education system which had been “a model of excellence and reference”. He emphasized, like the socialists, that the solution starts from within the system, not from outside.
Batet held the Government of the Generalitat responsible not only for the drop in results, but for poor communication management, which has generated more discouragement and bewilderment among teachers. “We must not invent more programs of the department, which have already shown that they do not work. Let’s let the teachers work”, removing bureaucracy from them to dedicate themselves to the essentials, which is the transmission of knowledge, values ??and a culture of effort. Together, he withdrew confidence in the Superior Evaluation Council, which “does not have the expertise or ability to make a diagnosis”, and supports the creation of an Evaluation and Prospecting Agency whose management, all and this, he wants to agree. He bet to restore the 6th hour in centers of high complexity.
In addition, he proposed structural changes – some of which have succeeded in Portugal – to bring to the Spanish Government, such as extending education to 18 and primary school to 14, or dejudicializing education.
The CUP, for its part, has not opposed the creation of the committee, but criticized the Government for evading urgent decisions to respond to a “very serious educational crisis” in which “bad signs” emerge both in terms of knowledge as inclusion and inequality. “We have refrained – explained Carles Riera – because it is a way of centrifuging responsibilities to other areas”.
The commons, meanwhile, are willing to roll up their sleeves, but expressed skepticism and concern about the chosen method. The president of the ECP group, Jéssica Albiach, regretted that the composition of the new group is not representative enough and that it runs the risk of “closing itself in an office”. For his part, Carlos Carrizosa, leader of Cs, has described the “simple make-up” proposal as an “endogamic” procedure, without much hope in terms of results. According to Lorena Roldán, of the PP, the “failure of immersion” in the drop in academic results has not been recognised.
