{"id":13732,"date":"2026-09-16T00:00:53","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T22:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webecpol.esade.edu\/?post_type=publicaciones&p=13732"},"modified":"2026-09-15T12:05:19","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T10:05:19","slug":"everything-you-need-to-know-about-pisa-2025-on-equity","status":"publish","type":"publicaciones","link":"http:\/\/webecpol.esade.edu\/en\/publications\/everything-you-need-to-know-about-pisa-2025-on-equity\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything you need to know about PISA 2025 on equity"},"content":{"rendered":"

What this report does<\/h3>\n

This report assesses the state of equity, or equality of opportunity, in education in Spain and its autonomous communities, based on an original and detailed analysis of the PISA 2025 microdata and a comparison with the 2022 data. Describing and understanding educational equity in depth is highly relevant for a country’s social and economic future, for young people’s real opportunities, and for present and future human capital and social cohesion. This is especially true in Spain, where the early school leaving rate has historically been high and remains persistent.<\/p>\n

PISA 2025 is marked by a widespread decline in results, particularly severe in Spain and especially in reading:<\/strong> 451 points, 23 fewer than in 2022 \u2014more than a school year’s worth of learning\u2014, compared with the 14 points lost by the OECD-35 average. Following this decline, Spain falls below the OECD in all three competencies assessed.<\/p>\n

Against this backdrop, the usual equity indicators improve even though the results of vulnerable students have fallen<\/strong>. They do so because students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds have dropped twice as much as the rest, which does not amount to a full improvement in equity and also implies a decline in performance<\/strong>, since the learning of vulnerable students has also fallen. In relative terms, Spain is now a more equal country; in absolute terms, every social group is worse off than three years ago. A gap that narrows because everyone converges downwards should not be interpreted as good news.<\/p>\n

Main findings<\/h3>\n

By socioeconomic status,<\/strong> we find that:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • The gap is closing from the top.<\/strong> The most advantaged quartile (Q4) loses 33 points in reading and the most disadvantaged (Q1), 15.1. The Q4\u2212Q1 gap narrows by 18 points and the weight of social background in scores falls from 12.1% to 8.3%, placing Spain in the most equitable third of the OECD, on a par with Finland.<\/li>\n
  • Across almost the entire OECD, the results of advantaged students worsen, but those of disadvantaged students do not.<\/strong> While the poorest decile in the OECD-35 remains at its 2022 level (\u22120.6 points), Spain’s loses 10.6.<\/li>\n
  • In fifteen of the sixteen autonomous communities analysed, all four quartiles lose ground<\/strong>, with the exception of Castilla-La Mancha. The Valencian Community<\/strong> is the only one where disadvantaged students fall further (61.2 points) than advantaged students (53.0), and the Basque Country<\/strong> combines one of the smallest internal gaps in Spain with the lowest performance in the country in its top quartile.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    As for the inequalities affecting students with a migrant background,<\/strong> the results show that:<\/p>\n

      \n
    • Students with a migrant background score 35.3 points lower in reading, a smaller gap than in the OECD-35<\/strong> (44.6) and the EU (52.3). And once socioeconomic status is accounted for, the gap is smaller: 15.4 points. This places Spain as a country where the migrant disadvantage is above all a socioeconomic disadvantage.<\/li>\n
    • However, this net gap has doubled in three years<\/strong> and is widening in most autonomous communities, sharply so in Andalusia (from \u22127.1 to 21.5 points) and La Rioja (from 7.6 to 36.9). The decline is concentrated among first-generation migrant students (26.2 points, compared with 19.8 for the second generation).<\/li>\n
    • Changes in the composition of the student population, in terms of both migrant background and socioeconomic status, explain only a very small part of the decline in results in Spain<\/strong>: of the 21.9-point total drop in reading, \u22120.1 points are associated with changes such as rising immigration and poverty; the rest corresponds to students who are identical in these characteristics but who, owing to other factors, score lower.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      In grade repetition<\/strong>, inequalities are much greater in the Spanish case:<\/p>\n

        \n
      • The downward trend in grade repetition has come to a halt<\/strong>: 22%<\/strong> of 15-year-old students have repeated a grade, the same as in 2022, now that the exceptional repetition measures applied in 2020 and 2021 have been lifted. Even so, Spain remains the OECD country with the third-highest repetition rate<\/strong>, more than double the OECD-35 (9.8%).<\/li>\n
      • All of the excess is concentrated in the lower half of the social ladder<\/strong>: around 7% of the top quartile repeat, the same as their OECD counterparts, while 40% of the bottom socioeconomic quartile repeat, compared with 16% internationally.<\/li>\n
      • With equal competencies, a student from the bottom quartile is 5 times more likely to have repeated a grade than one from the top quartile<\/strong> (4.5 in 2022; 2.3 in the OECD-35). This indicator remains the second highest in the OECD-35.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

        Finally, regarding digital use and artificial intelligence,<\/strong> we observe that:<\/p>\n

          \n
        • Spanish students use digital devices slightly less than the OECD average,<\/strong> both for learning and for leisure. Moreover, this use has declined slightly in recent years.<\/li>\n
        • Spanish students use devices less than the OECD average, but they are among those who rely most on AI for reading and writing:<\/strong> 46% use chatbots at least weekly to summarise texts or write assignments, nine points above the OECD-35. The higher the socioeconomic status, the greater the use of AI for tasks that complement students’ own work \u2014using AI to learn or do research\u2014 but not for those that can replace it: summarising texts barely changes, from 38% to 41%.<\/li>\n
        • The classroom evens out AI use; free time does not.<\/strong> In class, the gap between quartiles in daily AI use is seven percentage points (from 29% to 36%); outside school, where use is considerably higher, it widens to twelve (from 39% to 51%).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

          Proposals to keep improving equality of opportunity and educational equity<\/h3>\n
            \n
          1. Strengthen, from the early stages and more decisively than to date, individualised or small-group support and catch-up tutoring<\/strong>, within or outside school hours. In particular, set goals and provide intensive, personalised support in literacy and mathematics for all highly vulnerable, low-performing students.<\/li>\n
          2. Encourage the participation of vulnerable students in safe non-formal education<\/strong> spaces that offer them academic support as well as alternative leisure opportunities.<\/li>\n
          3. Improve access to quality early childhood education for ages 0 to 3<\/strong> for children from low socioeconomic and migrant backgrounds, by increasing investment and improving the working conditions of its staff.<\/li>\n
          4. Promote teacher training<\/strong> aimed at improving effectiveness and practical skills in classroom management in heterogeneous classes<\/strong>, as well as training to reflect on and change beliefs and teaching practices related to assessment and grade repetition.<\/li>\n
          5. Commit to longer school days<\/strong>, guaranteeing free school materials, meals and transport for children living in poverty, as well as their access to sufficient grants that help them stay in school and continue into post-compulsory education.<\/li>\n
          6. Provide additional resources for non-teaching staff in high-complexity schools<\/strong> (support for diversity, guidance counselling, social workers, reception classrooms) and consider targeted reductions in student\u2013teacher ratios where the concentration of vulnerable students or students with specific needs justifies it.<\/li>\n
          7. Support the development of school projects in highly vulnerable contexts that are committed to the academic success of all their students<\/strong>, by fostering teaching staff stability, support services and additional teaching resources, data collection, and support for school leadership teams.<\/li>\n
          8. Guarantee digital training for students and teachers focused on developing competencies for a safe, critical, responsible, healthy and learning-oriented use of artificial intelligence<\/strong> and the digital environment; effectively implement restrictions on mobile phones<\/strong> in the classroom to uphold the right to disconnect and protect students’ attention; and, more generally, carry out ex ante evaluations of the digital tools<\/strong> used by schools.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

            What this report does This report assesses the state of equity, or equality of opportunity, in education in Spain and its autonomous communities, based on an original and detailed analysis of the PISA 2025 microdata and a comparison with the 2022 data. 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