Education

Key Data The gaps in educational outcomes in Spain have tended to remain stable or increase after the pandemic:   → One out of every six points of difference between students in PISA mathematics scores can be explained by socioeconomic inequality, a degree similar to 2018.   → Students from a low socioeconomic background are almost 4 […]

Aida Caldera, head of division in the OECD’s economics department, talks to Jorge Galindo, deputy director of EsadeEcPol, about the organization’s latest report analyzing the Spanish economy. They address its short-term resilience and how it contrasts with the worst medium- and long-term prospects, going in depth into its bottlenecks (productivity, debt) and how they condition […]

50% of Full Professors (Catedráticos) and 24% of Associate Professors (Profesores Titulares) are sixty or older, which means they can be expected to retire over the next decade. Merely keeping the number of permanent faculty constant would require hiring some 12,000 new profiles over that time. This need opens up an opportunity to boost research, […]

Last Tuesday, November 28th, we talked about our book “Un País Posible: Manual de Reformas Políticamente Viables” (Un País Posible: A Handbook of Politically Viable Reforms) thanks to the invitation of the Harvard Kennedy School Spain Alumni Network. The conversation counted with the interventions of Toni Roldán, Miguel Almunia, Marta Suárez-Varela and Antonio Cabrales and […]

Spain has practically the same real per capita income as 15 years ago, while other countries around us are much richer than they were then. This means that over the last eighteen years we have not improved our average standard of living. We are therefore on the road to two lost decades. There are many […]

Key ideas → At EsadeEcPol we have carried out a new analysis of household school spending that is more comprehensive and rigorous than existing ones. → Average spending per pupil on school supplies is €328 in Primary, €398 in Compulsory Secondary Education (ESO) and €474 in Bachillerato (upper secondary). → Textbooks and IT equipment are […]

Between 2013 (the historical peak) and 2023, Spain lost 450,000 children under the age of 16, that is, potential pupils in the compulsory stages of early childhood and compulsory education. By 2037 the figure will exceed 1 million children. The education system will go from having to absorb 7.5 million to fewer than 6.5 million […]

In recent years the average grade in Selectividad, Spain’s university entrance exam, has risen from 8.75 out of 14 in 2015/2016 to 10.34 in 2021/2022. This increase can be seen in all regions. The most common hypothesis in public debate to explain this rise is that it is artificial: students know less and less, and […]

In two sentences: → The PIRLS 2021 test reveals a 7-point decline in reading achievement in Spain linked to school closures during the pandemic. This decline (significant at 95% but not at 99%) is more moderate than that experienced by many neighbouring countries, which corresponds to the school closure period, shorter in our case. → […]

The use of administrative education data is changing at great speed thanks to the greater availability of administrative data and also to methodological advances in economics and the social sciences. However, Spain is falling behind despite the efforts of some regional administrations and the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training over the last decade and […]

We provide evidence from a randomized controlled trial on the effectiveness of a novel, 100-percent online math tutoring program, targeted at secondary school students from highly disadvantaged neighborhoods in Spain. The intensive, eightweek-long program was delivered by qualified math teachers in groups of two students during after-school hours, six months after Covid-19 related school closures […]

EsadeEcPol celebra su tercer aniversario con el lanzamiento de su primer encuentro anual, cuyo tema principal será la educación, una de sus líneas prioritarias de investigación. Durante el evento debatiremos sobre cómo mejorar la educación mediante propuestas de política educativa que partan del análisis y la investigación rigurosa, y que, al mismo tiempo, tengan en cuenta […]