The Community of Madrid has overtaken Castilla y León in leading the PISA report and ranks first in Science (495) and Mathematics (477), as well as second in Reading (469), behind Asturias (471), which is third in Science (492) and fourth in Mathematics (469). These three regions perform best in the international assessment, but they do not match Finland as in previous occasions. The reality is that all autonomous communities have declined in all the competencies analyzed compared to 2022. All except Castilla-La Mancha, which is the only one that improves: it rises 10 points in Science to reach 485. The loss of positions by the others places 15-year-old students from Castilla-La Mancha in a privileged position: from being at the tail end, they move among the six best regions in Spain.
Spain is the country participating with the largest sample among the 90 territories participating in PISA. This means that the autonomous communities present as many students as some small countries. There is a single education law here but 17 different systems with many differences: a kind of miniature countries. Between Madrid, which is now the best, and the Valencian Community (450 in Science), which is now the worst, there is a 45-point difference. That is equivalent to two full school years.
The decline experienced by the vast majority of regions is very large compared to the 2022 report. It is especially noticeable in Mathematics, where the most dramatic drop was recorded by the Valencian Community (38 points less), followed by La Rioja (31), Navarra (30), Castilla y León (28), Asturias (26), Cantabria (25), Aragon (25), Basque Country (22), Balearic Islands (22), Galicia (20), Madrid (17), Murcia (16), Andalusia (16) and Extremadura (15). On the other hand, Canary Islands (five) and Castilla-La Mancha (two) barely lose points.
Catalonia has no comparable data because it excluded all students with learning difficulties when taking the exam, so its results are always well above the rest, with a clear “bias,” according to the OECD, which excluded it from the sample.
The drop in the Valencian Community is inexplicable, as it used to have average results but not to the point of approaching the levels of Ceuta (420) and Melilla (405). Sources consulted consider that it may have been due to the DANA (depression), according to Noa de la Torre: the tests were conducted a few months after the floods, with many students relocated to other centers.
It is the last region in Science and Mathematics (435) and the second to last in Reading (424). The fall of the Basque Country is also very striking, which in Mathematics (460) is above the Spanish average (457) but in Reading is the worst (419) and in Science, the third to last (459).
The new position of Madrid – lower, but beating Castilla y León – occurs in the context of being the autonomous community that has most resisted the innovations of the Lomloe. It rebelled against the Government and created its own curriculum with all those elements that had been removed from the state curriculum (the rule of three, dictations, in-depth study of the Golden Age…). Madrid students have had to study more content than in other autonomous communities, especially in History.
In Madrid, they also made a clear statement in favor of rigor and the culture of effort by maintaining numerical grades and honors distinctions and putting all possible limits on the state possibility of passing the course and obtaining the ESO diploma without limits on failing grades.
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All this, combined with its radical ban on the use of screens in schools and the return to EGB in the first years of high school, may have contributed to it ranking above the rest. However, it is the community that invests the least in education and has teachers on the brink of strike: they are going on strike in October.
Castilla y León and Asturias, for their part, are characterized by taking great care of students from rural areas and having a public school system that is even better than the charter and private schools. Families and society place great importance on education as a social elevator, and this has traditionally placed them in good positions, although Asturias has had to fight harder to make it noticeable in PISA, as it initially ranked at the bottom.
In reading, Asturias stands out above all, but it has lost 26 points since 2022. The regions that fall the most again are the Valencian Community (down 58 points), the Basque Country (47), Cantabria (33), Castilla y León (32), Balearic Islands (31), Galicia (31), Madrid (27), Aragon (27), La Rioja (26), Murcia (20), Andalusia (20), Canary Islands (18), Extremadura (17) and Murcia (15). The one that loses the least is again Castilla-La Mancha (seven).
It is the region with the highest percentage of public schooling in Spain and one of the territories where the most early school leaving occurred during the years of the real estate bubble. The president of Castilla-La Mancha, Emiliano García-Page, has attributed its new positioning to “having doubled the staff of professionals dedicated to specialized attention for all boys and girls” and has boasted of having made a “commitment to strengthening reading and math skills.”
Regarding the worsening of the Basque Country, Lucas Gortázar, deputy director of the think tank EsadeEcPol, attributes it to “intensive use of screens and the expansion of the D model,” with teaching entirely in Basque, which has increased in the last 15 years from 50% to 80% of students. “Euskadi is by far the territory with the highest use of technology in classrooms, not only in Spain but in the EU,” he points out.
The biggest drops in Science have occurred in the Valencian Community, with 33 points less, in the Basque Country, with 21, and in Galicia, with 20. There is also a considerable decline in Navarra (17), Aragon (17) and La Rioja (16), as well as in Cantabria (14), Castilla y León (13), Murcia (12), Balearic Islands (11), Andalusia (11) and Asturias (11). Madrid only loses seven points, Extremadura six and Canary Islands four. Castilla-La Mancha gains 10.
