Catalonia’s Department of Education has dismissed its Secretary General, Teresa Sambola, and begun disciplinary proceedings against three staff members over errors in the 2025 PISA assessment sample. For pupils, families and schools, the error means Catalonia’s results cannot be treated as statistically valid alongside those of other territories.

Education Minister Esther Niubó announced the measures on Monday, 31 August. She said Sambola’s replacement marked a “new stage” for the Department, rather than a direct sanction for the PISA incident.

According to eldiario.es, the disciplinary cases concern two officials and one senior official responsible for managing the assessment. Two cases concern an alleged serious failure to fulfil public-service duties, while the third concerns an alleged minor offence. Any sanctions will be decided after the proceedings end.

“We do not minimise the seriousness of what happened,” Niubó said.

Exemption rate was more than four times the OECD threshold

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which runs the Programme for International Student Assessment, recommends that no more than 5% of a territory’s selected pupils are exempted from taking the test. Catalonia’s exemption rate reached 23.2% during testing held from 31 March to 16 May 2025.

  • 591 pupils were exempted from a sample of more than 2,000 selected pupils.
  • Six exemptions were linked to physical disabilities.
  • 493 were linked to cognitive, behavioural or emotional disabilities.
  • 92 were linked to insufficient language proficiency.

Only five of the 51 participating schools met the OECD’s recommended exemption rate, Niubó said. The Minister said guidance sent to schools was correct but incomplete because it did not state the 5% limit.

She also said the Spanish Ministry of Education alerted the Department while some schools had yet to administer the tests, leaving time for corrective action. Niubó said school heads were not responsible and that accountability lay with the Department of Education.

Catalonia excluded from OECD’s regional comparison

Catalonia will appear in Spain’s national PISA report with a technical warning, but will not be included in the OECD annex comparing Spain’s autonomous communities. The reported sample failure prevents a like-for-like comparison with other territories or previous results.

The three disciplinary cases will determine whether the alleged management failures warrant penalties.

Primary sources: govern.cat, repositori.educacio.gencat.cat. Reported by eldiario.es, russpain.com, en.ara.cat, ARA, Catalan News (in English), europapress.es, Diari ARA, ara.cat.