Doctor in Philosophy and Educational Sciences and professor at the University of the Basque Country (UPV) until 2018, Luis Lizasoain He is an expert in Research Methods and Diagnosis in Education. Throughout his professional life, this teacher and researcher has dedicated himself to visiting schools throughout Spain and Latin America to investigate what works and what does not work in the classrooms. Following the latest and devastating PISA report, he held a meeting with EL PERIÓDICO in the city where he resides, San Sebastián.
Spain has fallen eight points in mathematics compared to the 2018 PISA. Catalonia, 20. And the average of OECD countries, 15, an unprecedented drop in the history of the international program.
Four or five points difference is not alarming. What we have to look at are the trends, which show that in a decade, from 2012 to 2022, we are going downwards. The negative surprise is that Catalonia and the Basque Country have had very bad results. Unfortunately, it is no surprise that the Canary Islands, Extremadura, Murcia and Andalusia continue to have very low data. All this has to make us reflect.
“With the high level of repetition that we have in Spain, it is difficult for us to do well in PISA”
How do we reverse the situation?
With the high levels of repetition that we have in Spain, it is very difficult for us to do well in PISA.
Because?
PISA examines 15-year-old male and female students, the majority are in the 4th year of ESO. But let’s get to the data. In Spain, in the 21-22 academic year, only 76% of the students were in the course that corresponded to them by age. That means that the other 24% are at least a year behind. If PISA examines 15 or 16 year old students who should be in 4th grade but are, for example, in 3rd grade, how are they going to do well on that test if they are being asked things that they have not seen in class?
Spain leads, unfortunately, the repetition.
The repetition rate in the first stage of secondary school is 8.7%, an absolute record in the EU. At the end of secondary school, in the 4th year of ESO, it is difficult to fix it. Passing the course without checking that these students know what they need to know is like putting fake coins into circulation. What it is about is that we guarantee that all students, year after year, learn what they need to learn.
“Passing the course without checking that students know what they need to know is like putting fake coins into circulation. We must guarantee that everyone learns what they need to learn year after year”
And how do you do that?
With money, but well invested. For example: in reinforcements, in lowering the ratio of students per teacher, in co-teaching. Also with early diagnosis and intervention. Spain obtains the worst grade in child poverty in the EU, according to the latest Unicef study. This is what we have to talk about. It’s not that our students are less intelligent, it’s poverty poorly served. And let’s talk about another structural problem, early school leaving, which includes not finishing high school or finishing it but not continuing studying. Basic FP has helped mitigate the problem, but it is still an important and present phenomenon not in all of Spain but in the Mediterranean area: Catalonia, the Valencian Community, the Balearic Islands, Murcia, and Andalusia.
What explanation does it have?
The enormous presence of the hospitality industry, which attracts young people with easy and relatively well-paid jobs. As happened with the brick boom, which stopped.
What steps can be taken to improve the education system?
There are no magic wands. But we know that there are things that work. Educational systems that are doing well have a good public network. It is suicide to turn the public school into a subsidiary. This is what has happened, for example, in Colombia, one of the countries that fares worst in PISA.
“What is a good school? One that manages to bring all its students forward regardless of their context”
Segregation is a very serious problem. The results between non-migrant and migrant students are equal if the ‘poverty factor’ is subtracted
When the schoolyard our son goes to fills with migrant children, we take him out. The fault is not those families, who only want the best for their children and who know that when a school is a ghetto the quality usually worsens. It is not that the presence of migrant students is a problem, it is that when their proportion and diversity exceeds certain limits, the work of teachers becomes difficult. If these teachers do not receive specific help, the quality, logically, suffers. And that despite the effort they put in. Politicians and managers must know that diversity makes things interesting. In very uniform and homogeneous societies you do not learn to live with others. What do we do with the children of immigrants? Do we want them to only engage in precarious jobs in the future? They have the same educational rights as natives. Segregation is very complex. It is not only an educational problem, it is also an urban problem.
“It is suicide to turn the public school into a subsidiary”
What is a good school?
The one who manages to bring all his students forward regardless of their context. They are the cabbages that guarantee a minimum for everyone. The key is a committed and professional teacher who receives constant training, works as a team, and has responsive management whose objective is to bring all kids forward. They are schools that have reinforcement teachers for differentiated attention depending on the student, co-dentity and low ratios in some subjects. They are schools that are rowing in the same direction and not as happens on many occasions, where one teacher does a PowerPoint course and another on ‘coaching’. In highly effective centers, they first evaluate their needs and bring the best expert to school, who provides training. A high level of effectiveness also involves a lot of evaluation. That doesn’t mean doing a lot of tests, but rather having feedback.
Their research has also shown that school climate is essential for learning.
Yes, the climate and coexistence. That does not mean that school is a paradise, but that when there is a problem it is tackled and solved because the teachers have been specifically trained. In this way, an adequate work environment is achieved with a high proportion of time dedicated to teaching-learning tasks.
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Please explain more recipes to improve education.
Stop functioning based only on ideologies or fashions. Policies that are based on research and scientific evidence must be applied. If teaching practice is not based on evidence… what do you do it in? What worked 40 years ago? It must be taken into account that not all schools are the same. There are some that work very well and others, very poorly. Most are in the middle ground. But not everyone needs the same thing. So why do we apply the same plan to everyone? The same thing happens with PISA. Let’s see, have all our students dropped 20 points? No, some more than others. Let’s look at those. Another thing we know doesn’t work is grouping by performance, which France has decided to do.