Reacción a "Interpreting the results of the PISA 2025 report"

The fact that the decline is greater amongst families with a higher socio-economic and cultural status in many countries highlights the need to investigate what has changed within this group. Much emphasis is placed on the fact that these households may have more technological devices, but I believe we should also explore the living conditions of this group.

The data also indicate that adolescents are receiving less support at home, and this is consistent with something we already observed in the 2022 wave: the working conditions of university-educated mothers are deteriorating. In other words, an indirect effect of the 2009 crisis has been to make work-life balance more difficult and, consequently, to reduce family support. The crisis did not affect the first PISA cohorts, as those adolescents had already been raised, but today’s adolescents have grown up in the ‘new normal’: upper-middle-class families with less free time.

Until 2015, PISA revealed a divide between northern and southern Spain, reflecting a long-standing trend of educational disparities dating back at least to the 19th century. Since then, a new group has emerged: bilingual regions. It would be worth studying in greater detail why, prior to 2015, several of these regions performed above average (the Basque Country, Navarre and Catalonia) or close to average (the Valencian Community) and have since seen their results decline. The obvious explanation—language—does not account for the results prior to 2015, and the impact of immigration has already been examined; whilst it is a factor in the decline, it is not the sole cause. As this is a politically contentious issue, it requires a calm and well-founded study based on an analysis of the specific circumstances in each region, rather than merely a superficial examination of the PISA data.