Spain: The Evidence Provided by International Large-Scale Assessments About the Spanish Education System: Why Nobody Listens Despite All the Noise

Abstract

ILSAs show that student performance in Spain is lower than the OECD average and has shown no progress from 2000 until 2011/2012. One of the main features is the low proportion of top performers. During this long period of stagnation, the education system was characterized by having no national (or standardized regional) evaluations and no flexibility to adapt to the different needs of the student population. The fact that the system was blind and rigid, plus the lack of common standards at the national level, gave rise to three major deficiencies: a high rate of grade repetition, which led to high rates of early school leaving, and large differences between regions. These features of the Spanish education system represent major inequities. However, PISA findings were used to reinforce the misguided view that the Spanish education system prioritized equity over excellence. After the implementation of an education reform, some improvements in student performance took place in 2015 and 2016. Unfortunately, the results for PISA 2018 in reading were withdrawn for Spain, apparently due to changes in methodology which led to unreliable results. To this date, no explanation has been provided raising concerns about the reliability and accountability of PISA.