Simó avoids self-criticism: "PISA does not reflect the measures we are applying"

Councilor Anna Simó appeared yesterday in front of the press seven days after the PISA report was published, with the worst results in history, which has caused citizens to worry about the educational quality of the Catalan system. At yesterday’s appearance, the minister assured that the poor results in Catalonia do not reflect the effects of all the measures that the department began to introduce in recent years to reverse the trend, and that families can trust the education system Catalan.

The minister pointed to improvements in the equitable distribution of vulnerable students thanks to the pact against school segregation, the implementation of which began in 2022 with very good results, as she highlighted. “At this rate, in three or four years segregation will be history in this country,” he said.

But the PISA report cannot pick up these positive advances, since the students were examined in March 2022. Instead, the internal assessments, the basic skills of this year, do observe tender green shoots with the reduction of students which were in the lowest performing range.

This year, students in the 4th and 6th primary and those in the 2nd and 4th of the ESO will be evaluated, some courses in a sample way, and others, census, which should provide a better temperature of the system.

Evaluate, evaluate and evaluate. This was the slogan he repeated several times, evaluate to diagnose better and also to see, with evidence, if the policies applied are efficient. The minister announced “profound” changes to the Superior Evaluation Council, which will be extinguished to become an evaluation and prospecting agency, external to the ministry. This will be finalized in January, despite the fact that the decree will not be published until July 2024.

The announcement is preceded by the controversy over the role of the Superior Assessment Council, chaired by Carles Vega, in the PISA tests on December 5. The Secretary of Educational Policies, Ignasi Garcia Plata, attributed the results obtained by an overrepresentation of immigrant students (from 14.9% to 24% of PISA) to an error in the sample. The next day, Education rectified.

The sample had been validated by the Superior Evaluation Council before the tests were carried out in March 2022, as the minister assured yesterday, who exonerated the senior officials of the error. She explicitly ratified Garcia Plata, her right hand in the department and one of the few appointments designated by her. Precisely, Garcia Plata brings, among other things, experience in administration management for how the rest of the senior positions were appointed from 2021 by the previous councilor Josep Gonzàlez-Cambray and replaced the secretary, the general directors, deputy directors and other technicians. He also appointed Carles Vega as president of the evaluation board. Garcia Plata was general director of Teaching and Staff of Public Centers between 2015 and 2021, a key position in the management of school centers during the pandemic, which was carried out with remarkable success in Catalonia. “Garcia Plata is not the problem, he is part of the solution”, he concluded.

Simó asked the educational community, families and political parties – in a clear allusion to the opposition to the Government – to “play together” with the department to support the current measures and those that will be presented to Parliament in January, as he promised in the monograph on education in June, when he had just arrived in office. He will also go to the plenary session of the School Council of Catalonia today to explain the PISA results.

So, he assumed that the education system needs deep reforms and admitted that the Ministry of Education cannot do it alone and that the complicity of other Government departments is needed, more budget and the vote in favor of all political forces to implement some measures and to last two legislatures. The agreement would address challenges such as education, language and social vulnerability. “We don’t have to jump around and react on the spur of the moment,” he said.

The councilor offered a collection of proposals of different scope and consideration. Among the 10 measures, stand out a potential increase in reception classes that serve immigration, which is subject to the new budgets, and the implementation of a program next school year to serve newly arrived foreign teenagers that is already activated, as a pilot, in Barcelona. Also the lowering of ratios in ESO in the 2026-2027 academic year, if spaces are found to enable classrooms or if more modules are built.

He also addressed the reform of university teacher training, a resident program (type MIR medical). Or the offer of after-school classes with educational value for the most vulnerable students, a measure that was key to the reform of Portugal. “The plan for full-time education exceeds the sixth hour,” he explained. The charter school has the sixth hour and in the PISA report its data is better. “It is a mistake to compare the public and the concerted, we are all educational systems”, he concluded.

“We must invest and focus the investment”, he assured. He explained that work is being done on a plan to reinforce mathematics, reading comprehension, written and oral expression so that teachers can attend to students when they detect difficulties with individualized tutoring, but without them meaning more hours for teachers. The department prepares the training and materials.