The results that surprised no one

These days, everyone is talking about the disastrous results obtained by students in the Spanish state in the PISA tests. It is true that the trend has not been positive for years, but rather the opposite; however, there is one issue that is especially alarming: reading comprehension. For years, the education system has been balancing constant legislative changes, pedagogical experiments, budget cuts, and forced digitalization without achieving the desired results. All this paraphernalia has eclipsed a fundamental issue: school no longer guarantees that students know how to read and write. Degrees are given away and students are passed to the next grade to mask a chilling reality, which is that every year the system churns out students with an ESO degree in hand that is good for nothing more than for the government of the day to exempt itself from the responsibility of having a high school failure rate. Students with an ESO degree incapable of maintaining a basic level conversation in Catalan; students with an ESO degree who do not know how to locate continents on a map; students with an ESO degree who do not know what a percentage is; students with an ESO degree who cannot link two sentences in English and now, with all of you, the icing on the cake: students with an ESO –or high school– degree who do not understand what they read. Unfortunately, it seems that the system is no longer designed to educate children, but to look after them while their parents are at work.While the law asks teachers to train critical citizens, to evaluate competencies such as ‘learning to learn’ and to prepare students for the world of the future –a delirious abstraction– the reality is that the educational system is not a priority for political leaders. What future awaits all those who are not capable of understanding a short text? How is someone supposed to learn for themselves if they do not have the minimum literacy skills developed? Who will be the great beneficiary if, tomorrow, a worker is not even capable of understanding what their employment contract says? Who does it benefit that the public education system is in decline?It does not seem that the LOMLOE has helped much to improve the situation or to facilitate the work of teachers – whoever has read any of the evaluation criteria stipulated therein will know what we are talking about. Likewise, the implementation of some pedagogical approaches has not achieved, for the moment, much more than burdening teachers with bureaucracy. As if all this were not enough, artificial intelligence will arrive in schools to definitively suppress natural intelligence and, incidentally, will allow some to do business with new 'training' for teachers.It is true that the current educational model is much more ambitious than that of past times: it attempts to reach everyone, respect the family and personal situations of each child, adapt to the rhythm and needs of each student… But to achieve all this, the ground must be prepared: increase investment in education, dignify the role of teachers, implement realistic laws, and, ultimately, imbue the public education system with an authority and prestige that, as of now, it has lost. Lamentations and the patches with which public school has been mended over the last decades are of little use. An ESO degree that does not guarantee that the student has basic knowledge has the same value as a thirty-euro bill. Let's not fool ourselves; we will not get out of this situation by inertia or without making structural changes. It is necessary –more than ever, perhaps– that all parties involved –government, opposition, teachers, families, citizens committed to a better future (excuse the abstraction)– fight for the public education system to be a guarantee of knowledge and academic quality.