Catalonia's public-school directors have blamed weak oversight for an error in the PISA 2025 sample which recorded a proportion of exempted pupils above the maximum recommended by the OECD. The error means this year's Catalan results cannot be compared with those of other participating territories or previous PISA editions, limiting assessment of education policies introduced after the 2022 results.

The Associació de Directius de l’Educació Pública de Catalunya (Axia), which represents public-education leaders, said 51 schools should not be held solely responsible. Its president, Jordi Satorra, said the schools had received instructions and that the process included validation mechanisms intended to ensure submitted data met the required parameters.

Axia questions how the sample was checked

“There has been no control, or it has been deficient,” Jordi Satorra said in an interview with 3Cat.

Satorra said it was not credible that all 51 schools involved had made the same mistake independently. Axia has also said it learned of the issue through the press and objected to school leadership teams being portrayed as responsible for a problem beyond their remit.

  • The PISA 2025 sample included an exemption rate above the OECD's recommended maximum.
  • The transition to a new evaluation body took place between February and March 2025, while the tests were being prepared.
  • According to Axia, the loss of comparable results prevents a rigorous assessment of whether policies introduced after PISA 2022 have had an effect.

Evaluation-agency transition coincided with test preparation

Axia said oversight of the process had previously been the responsibility of the Consell Superior de l’Avaluació, the former education evaluation council. It was recently replaced by the Agència de l’Avaluació, the new evaluation agency.

Satorra said the changeover may have created an “impasse” in supervision. The association has called for those responsible to account for what happened and for safeguards to prevent a repeat.

Generalitat declines to assign responsibility

Salvador Illa, president of the Generalitat, Catalonia's regional government, said the priority was to establish what happened rather than assign blame. Speaking during an official visit to Vietnam, he also gave his full support to Esther Niubó, the regional minister for Education and Vocational Training.

“It is not about hanging the burden on anyone,” Illa said.

Niubó was scheduled to explain the incident to the Education Committee of the Parlament, Catalonia's parliament, on Monday afternoon.

Reported by Source Text Link, Agencias, russpain.com, Adrià Asbert, Mar Ferrando, Laura Fíguls / ACN, Diana Silva, elpais.com, ARA, elmundo.es, Carlota Camps, Helena López, Ivanna Vallespín, Editorial.