The PISA hangover marks the start of the academic year: "We cannot contrast skills and knowledge"

PalmaCoinciding with the start of a new school year and still reeling from the defeat of the PISA results, the Balearic Islands' education system is once again facing the same question, but with renewed urgency: what should be done now? The Islands have fallen below the Spanish, EU, and OECD averages in Mathematics, Reading, and Science, and the number of students who do not reach the minimum competencies once again calls into question the system's ability to guarantee basic learning.

For Carme Pinya, Dean of the Faculty of Education at the UIB, the answer cannot be a new battle between educational models or a single recipe. The results force us, according to her, to review what is taught, how it is taught, and, above all, whether what is done in the classrooms really responds to what is later asked of the students. "I am a firm believer in innovation. But, for me, innovation does not go against the master class. The master class can be part of the innovation process," she argues. Pinya believes that one of the first things to review is the debate on the way of teaching. "We have wanted to make them enemies, and they are not. Sometimes you need one thing and the other."

The dean gives as an example the learning of multiplication tables. "To learn the multiplication tables, you have to learn them, but then you have to go further to understand, for example, whether a 50% discount or a 2-for-1 deal is more beneficial for us." For years, she recalls, the system relied excessively on memorization. "There have been times when for years everything was about cramming, and we have seen that it is not enough." Now, however, she believes the challenge is to find the balance between acquiring knowledge and knowing how to use it.

Neither only memorizing nor only competencies

Precisely this is one of the questions that the PISA results bring back to the table: what type of learning do students need? Pinya rejects the idea that the answer is to choose between knowledge and competencies. She reminds us that the OECD understands competencies as the combination of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that allow for dealing with different situations. "It is not that, because we do competencies, we do not do mathematics; it is that within competencies there must be knowledge".

The debate, therefore, should not be between a masterclass and a competency-based activity, nor between memorizing and doing projects. "A competency-based education has knowledge, because, if not, with what do you develop yourself?", she poses. For Pinya, the problem is that the system has not yet finished finding the balance between the two things. And this is where the PISA results should serve to look at what is really happening inside the classrooms. "One must look at what PISA analyzes and what is done in the Islands, because there is a great disagreement here".

The PISA hangover can also fuel quick responses, such as adding hours of Mathematics or more content, which is what the Department of Education has promoted. Pinya, however, asks for caution: "Adding more class hours does not necessarily have to be positive. Or not. It depends on what you want to achieve." He does not rule out that it could be useful, but warns that it cannot become an isolated measure. "You need to lower ratios, train teachers, train professionals, improve infrastructure, air conditioning, work... We need many things."

That is why he demands a global intervention plan adapted to the particularities of the Islands. "Balearic society, and all societies, have particularities. There is a dizzying speed, a specific socioeconomic situation." Among these particularities, he points out the impact of the labor market: "Our community is a society where there is more school dropout due to access to jobs related to tourism." And he leaves an open question about the system's capacity to respond: "Society is changing and I do not know if we are putting the necessary resources into it."

"How can we take care of adolescents if we can only survive?"

The question formulated by Pinya summarizes one of her concerns: "How can we attend to adolescents if we can only survive?". The dean considers it unfair to place all the responsibility for the results on the teachers: "The one responsible is not the teaching staff, it is all of us". But she also warns that asking for more individualized attention without more resources is difficult: "We need hands, lower ratios, better conditions", she demands. Student mobility, she adds, also does not help to consolidate educational processes.

Pinya demands a global response: "Small interventions are useless". To understand the PISA results, she considers it necessary to look beyond the school: "What access do these young people have to culture? A plan is needed. What access to housing do they have? What labor insertion do they have?". Socioeconomic inequalities and a labor market that offers early opportunities to young people also condition, according to Pinya, the educational results. Finally, she points to technology and, especially, mobile phones, but the problem goes beyond the phone: "Attention has fallen a lot and motivation, too. We see it in the students at the Faculty", she says. For Pinya, technology can be part of learning, but it should not automatically replace other pedagogical tools.

At its core, Pinya calls for taking advantage of PISA results to carry out a deeper review of the system, starting by analyzing whether there is a correspondence between what the test evaluates and what is habitually practiced in the classrooms. "We must look at what PISA analyzes and what is done in the Islands, because here there is a great discrepancy," he states. But he warns that detecting this distance does not mean having to replace one methodology with another.

Pinya calls for a response that is not reduced to a single measure. "We need many things": lower ratios, more professionals, teacher training, better infrastructure, attention to inequalities, and a review of educational practices. In short, rather than choosing between innovation and traditional teaching, he considers it necessary to determine what the students of the Balearic Islands really need to learn more and better.