"Immigration is an important factor that has come to modify the reality of the classrooms." These are the words of the Secretary of State for Education, Abelardo de la Rosa, who during the presentation of PISA stressed that "Spain welcomes more immigrant students" than the average of countries that participate in this evaluation. Specifically, 20.3% of students of foreign origin take the exam, compared to 16.7% of the OECD average and 16.3% of the EU as a whole.
The report shows that there are countries with a high percentage of immigrant students and high performance of their students, such as Canada, Singapore or Australia. Of course, the OECD says that additional support must be given to these centers. And it doesn't seem like Spain is doing it.
In Spanish classrooms, native students obtain better results than those of immigrant origin. Although, "when discounting the effect of the socioeconomic and cultural index, the disadvantage of the immigrant is reduced by half and remains below the OECD and the EU," noted the number two of the Ministry of Education. Specifically, there is a difference in Science of 40 points between natives and immigrants, which remains in a gap of 20 when the socioeconomic index and mother tongue are discounted.
Economic resources have an influence, but language also has an effect: when a student speaks a different language at school than the one they use at home, they get worse results, according to the OECD. And this has been seen in the collapse of the Basque Country, where the generalization of the learning model only in Basque has led this region, one of the richest in Spain, to be the last in line, especially harming Spanish-speaking students.
The OECD states that students who have received less than one year of instruction in the language in which the test is taken, as well as students with physical, intellectual or "emotional" disabilities, up to a maximum of 5%, may be exempt from the exam. What has been seen in this edition is a clear attempt by some autonomous communities to leave out of the sample those adolescents who, either due to lack of knowledge of the language or due to their intellectual difficulties, could obscure the results. Catalonia has had an exemption rate of 23.2% and its data is not valid for this reason. But Murcia has gotten 12.7% and the Balearic Islands, 7.5%.
Sources from the Murcian Government argue that they have more immigrant students who do not know the language and more students with special learning needs than other autonomies and that they have needed their exemption rate to be higher, in order not to be left at a disadvantage. Catalonia also blamed the poor results obtained in 2022 on an alleged "overrepresentation" in the sample of immigrant students, statements that led to the dismissal of the senior official at the head of the body in charge of the evaluation.
Spain boasts equity, because the average difference between high-income students and low-income students is lower than the OECD average and the EU average. That is to say, "although socioeconomic origin continues to play a relevant role in the results, a significant proportion manages to overcome these starting conditions," according to De la Rosa, convinced that "educational inequality in Spain is lower."
What happens is that this year something unprecedented has happened: there has been a more intense drop in performance among students from rich families. It has occurred across the board in most countries, although the magnitude of this drop is greater in Spain.
The evolution differs between competencies, but it is Reading that registers the most pronounced losses: while the decrease is 33 points for students in the highest income quartile, it is 15 points for the lowest income quartile.
In Science, there is an improvement of 2.7 points among middle class students and a drop of 12.6 points among the richest students, while the poorest students lose 4.5 points. In Mathematics, a negative evolution is also observed, with the greatest decrease (24.2 points, the equivalent of one school year) in the richest students, while the poorest students lose 10.5 points.
The conclusions are disturbing. First of all, PISA "points to a weakening of the performance of traditionally higher-performing students," says the Spanish report. Secondly, "Spain presents a systematically more negative evolution than the OECD, especially in Reading and Mathematics, where the losses are significantly higher at all socioeconomic levels." Thirdly, "while in the OECD there are still improvements among students of lower and intermediate socioeconomic level in Sciences, and even a certain stability in Mathematics, Spain shows a much more generalized deterioration, which affects practically all social groups."
