The change in social composition in Catalonia is more evident in schools than anywhere else. The PISA report made public this week has shed media light on this phenomenon: one in four students comes from another country or their parents have a migrant background. Generally speaking, they are more vulnerable children and achieve worse academic performance. The expectation of the educational success of these students, who have contributed to rejuvenating the Catalan population, forces a review of current educational policies.
“If the most vulnerable students receive more support to compensate for their starting disadvantage – pointed out Daniel Salinas, lead analyst for the PISA report in Spain -, it is very possible that their educational results will improve”. And if they improve, he continued, society will gain educated citizens, qualified workers with the plus of their multiculturalism, polyglots and rooted in the country.
According to the PISA report, Catalonia has a 24% population of migrant origin, well above Spain’s 15% (which has grown by 3 points compared to ten years ago) and far from the 5% of communities like Galicia. Likewise, 30% of the school population is at poverty levels, which is often linked to immigrants, but not always.
This population is the result of the waves of immigrants from the beginning of the century, the recent arrivals of teenagers, as well as the children of settled immigrants. “The number of children of Catalan women is declining, while the fertility rate of mothers of foreign origin is higher. The second generation is coming of age”, explains Lucas Gortázar, analyst at EsadeEcPol.
In virtually all countries, there are differences between the performance of native and foreign students, in favor of the former. Except in Canada and Australia, where the gap is almost non-existent. In the mathematics test, for example, 15-year-old native students in the OECD score 479, foreigners 448. In the European Union this difference is 43 points (over two years), and in Spain , of 33 points.
In reading and science, the differences range between 30 and 40 points, and are higher in all developed countries. In terms of poverty indices, the gap is even greater, 102 in the EU and 86 in Spain.
They generally start from a position of disadvantage for three reasons, according to Gortázar. Their economic and social situation, with unemployment, precarious jobs and poverty. For the cultural capital of the family and for having a language different from the school language. And because they come without a social network.
“Immigrant children who go to school at the age of 2 or 3 obtain results equivalent to those born in the country when they finish high school”, says former councilor Irene Rigau, “but not those who integrate at the age of 10”. In addition, according to PISA, both immigrant students and those from low-income families have higher rates of segregation, suffer more bullying from peers, more math anxiety (drastically lowers performance), less emotional well-being and express less feeling belonging to the school. “And in their centers there are fewer human and material resources”, adds Salinas.
Despite these barriers, there are students who are called “resilient” who, nevertheless, obtain high levels in some or all of the skills. In the OECD average they are 10%. In Spain as a whole it rises to 12%.
In Catalonia, the burden of immigration and poverty is higher than in the rest of the Peninsula. Of the 5.5 million foreigners in Spain, 1.27 live in Catalonia (2022 data). Of these, a little over half a million come from the African and Asian continents, which is why they speak a different language to the official ones. And 360,000 from America, especially from the south.
For these students, as reflected by the former president of the Superior Assessment Council Joan Mateo, the pandemic had more acute effects because during the confinements they stopped being in contact with Catalan, a language in which they later responded to PISA report. “For this reason, reading is the competition that falls the most this time, almost 40 points compared to 2015”, he points out. The drop in mathematics was 31?points.
“This phenomenon that is now manifesting itself in Catalonia will continue to grow and spread to the rest of Spain, so we must assume that, if we do nothing, it will have an impact on the overall Spanish educational results of the future “, points out Gortázar.