The Catalan government has declared the region’s latest PISA test results invalid after a sampling error excluded nearly a quarter of eligible students, well above the 5% threshold set by the OECD. The error surfaced just weeks before publication, prompting the Department of Education to open disciplinary proceedings and dismiss its secretary general.
The Department said the error originated internally: warnings from the Instituto Nacional de Evaluación Educativa (INEE), part of Spain’s Ministry of Education, went unheeded. The INEE flagged irregularities up to seven times before the exams, but its alerts never reached school administrators, leaving them no chance to correct the sample. The Department later admitted that the information sent to school directors about exclusion rates was also inaccurate.
Three disciplinary proceedings are now underway. One targets the former head of the Council for Educational Evaluation for negligence; two others involve civil servants accused of failing to fulfill their duties. None of the three remains in their previous role. The most senior official affected is Teresa Sambola, the former secretary general, who was dismissed. The government says her removal was intended to strengthen management and was not directly related to the PISA incident. Marta Clari, formerly a senior manager at Barcelona City Hall, has been appointed to replace her. The government has called for stronger internal controls.
The exclusion of 591 out of roughly 2,500 students means Catalonia’s PISA results cannot be compared with those of previous years or other regions. The OECD has said it will not validate the data, although the results will still appear in Spain’s national report. It remains unclear whether Catalonia’s flawed sample will affect the national average.
This is not the first time PISA testing has caused turmoil in Catalonia. In 2022, poor results led to the dismissal of the president of the Council for Educational Evaluation and the body’s dismantling. The current crisis has renewed debate over the region’s ability to manage large-scale educational assessments. The Department has not explained why such a impressive error occurred this year, despite Catalonia’s long experience with international tests such as TIMSS and PIRLS. It also routinely handles diagnostic exams.
Transparency remains a concern. The Department waited five months to acknowledge the error publicly, doing so only after schools had closed for summer. Officials have promised to release all documentation once the disciplinary cases conclude. The government’s spokesperson has assured the public that detailed information will be provided, but questions about communication and responsibility remain unanswered.
This episode follows a pattern of administrative upheaval in Catalonia’s education sector. As reported in recent coverage of the leadership shakeup, the region has faced repeated scrutiny over its handling of standardized assessments, raising broader questions about governance and accountability in the education system.
PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) is a triennial international survey coordinated by the OECD to evaluate education systems worldwide by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students. Regions such as Catalonia can pay for expanded samples to obtain detailed, comparable data. Excluding too many students undermines the statistical validity of the results, making reliable conclusions about educational performance impossible. The case shows why educational evaluations must follow international protocols and what can happen when they do not.
