Salvador Illa, president of the Generalitat, Catalonia’s regional government, has asked to appear before the Catalan Parliament over Catalonia’s exclusion from the 2025 PISA rankings. The exclusion became definitive in March 2026, when the OECD established that the territory’s results could not be compared internationally.

Parliament’s Bureau is due to approve the appearance on Wednesday 9 September. According to Nació, the session could be held on Wednesday 23 September. For pupils, families and schools, the immediate consequence is that Catalonia’s 2025 results cannot be treated as statistically valid alongside those of other territories or previous PISA editions.

Exemption rate exceeded OECD limit

The OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment, known as PISA, sets a maximum 5% exemption rate for a territory’s sample to be internationally comparable. In Catalonia, 23.3% of selected pupils were exempted from the 2025 tests.

  • The PISA tests were administered from 31 March to 16 May 2025.
  • The OECD’s contractor detected anomalies during the testing period, according to ARA’s reporting on a Spanish Education Ministry statement.
  • Technical staff at the National Institute for Educational Evaluation contacted Catalonia’s Superior Council for Educational Evaluation in April 2025.

The Spanish Education Ministry said those contacts remained at technical level because the scale and possible consequences of the problems had not yet been established. Milagros Tolón became Spain’s education minister in December 2025, eight months after the tests, so she was not minister when the April 2025 warning was issued.

Disciplinary proceedings follow senior official’s dismissal

Education Minister Esther Niubó dismissed the department’s secretary general, Teresa Sambola, on 31 August and opened three disciplinary proceedings over the test management. The cases concern two civil servants and one senior official.

Niubó has accepted political responsibility for the PISA failure while saying she did not know about the problem before it could no longer be corrected.

“I was not aware of the facts until the situation was already irreversible.”

Illa has continued to back Niubó. His appearance is expected to cover the handling of the PISA sample and the government’s call for a wider debate on Catalonia’s education model.

The disciplinary proceedings will determine whether the alleged failures in managing the assessment lead to penalties.

Primary sources: eb.gencat.cat, repositori.educacio.gencat.cat. Reported by naciodigital.cat, ARA, barna.news, Catalan News (in English), en.ara.cat, elDiario.es Catalunya, cronicaglobal.elespanol.com, elnacional.cat.