Why the level in mathematics and sciences of Spanish students of primary school and moves away from the average of developed countries? Education researchers have been trying to answer the question. A report published this Thursday by ESADEECPOL concludes that the main cause is the worsening of the material conditions in which children live in Spain. Between 2019 and 2023, the percentage of those who claim to get to school hungry, to reach 36% of the total, has increased by 55%. It has been reduced, and the percentage of those who have a desk to work. And at the same time the proportion of both those who do not have fixed Internet access in their home, and those of those who only have it through a mobile phone have grown. The study also reflects that one in three elementary room students (9 and 10 years old) never speak at home, or only sometimes the language of the school (which can be Spanish, Catalan or English, among others), a circumstance that also influences the results.
All of them are factors that do not depend solely, but in which one of the great phenomena that the Spanish education system is going through, in general, poor than the native, due to its increase (which has been 25% in primary in a five years) and the decline in birth in Spain since the great recession, is involved in recent years. The report also attributes a role in the low mathematical performance of Spanish students to other factors, such as the improvable level of knowledge in the field of primary school teachers, or the recoil of the good climate of the classroom.
Media scores in 4th grade
The information of the study conducted by, and the economist of education Galo Paul Cahu comes from the exploitation, isolating the impact of other factors, from the microdatos of the international evaluation. A test organized by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Performance that examines every four years in mathematics and science to 400,000 primary room students in 59 countries, 10,000 of them in Spain, in addition to collecting abundant social information of the kids, their homes and educational centers. Between the 2015 and 2023 editions (whose results were published in December), Spain lost in total 20 points (14 in science and 6 in mathematics). And it is now located in science 22 points away from the average of the OECD countries (an organization formed mostly by developed countries) already 27 in mathematics. 40 points are considered to be approximately a school year.
The authors compare the social conditions of primary school students in Spain and France, which worsened significantly between 2019 and 2023, with those of England, who did it to a lesser extent, and those of Portugal and Italy, where they maintained a similar level. In Spain, the proportion of 9 and 10 year old kids who claim to hunger to class now reaches 36% (after rising 55% in four years). “Recent causal studies have demonstrated the importance of adequate eating habits for children’s learning, both at home and at school, especially in the first years,” says the report.
This does not mean that everyone arrives hungry for economic reasons. TIMSS microdates show that if children are divided into quartiles depending on the rent of their home, there are significant percentages of kids who claim to arrive hungry in the four groups. While the differences between them are very large and grow in a sustained way as they are poorer. In the poorest quartile 52% of children arrive hungry (40% did in 2019). And in the richest, it does 18% (10% four years before), that is, almost three more times. In the increase there are therefore other issues, perhaps related to changes in family habits, that the TimS database does not allow distinguishing.
Homes without books
The economic hypothesis in the increase in school hunger is consistent with the increase in the child poverty rate – among those under 18 in recent years to 19.7% – and with other data with consequences for learning that TIMSS provides, such as the number of children’s books in homes. The percentage of children living in houses in which there are between 0 and 10 has risen from 12% to 16%, while those who have more than 50 copies have fallen from 34% to 31%. Students with a desk to work have decreased from 88% to 81%. And domestic Internet access has gone from 94% to 88%.
The study also shows that the percentage of those who always speak at home The language of the school has decreased eight points in four years, to 54%. In 2019, only 8.6% of the kids never spoke at home the language of the school, a proportion that has increased by 2023 to 12.4%, a figure five times higher than the average of developed countries. The percentage of those who spoke it sometimes has passed, in parallel, from 16.3% to 19.7%. In total, 32.1% never use it or does it recently.
Immigrants, co -official languages and English bilingualism
The authors point out that this is due, on the one hand, to increase immigration. But also “to the growing prevalence of co -official languages such as teaching from the first years in Spanish majority speech contexts (especially with Catalan and Basque)”, which, they affirm, “can harm the learning of students in primary school especially when the linguistic distance [entre la lengua escolar y la del hogar] It is greater ”, as well as the“ use of English as a language of instruction from primary school in several autonomous communities, for example, in the Community of Madrid ”.
The study indicates other causes that contribute to explaining the decrease in results. On the one hand, the increase of 11 points in the percentage of elementary room children with access to a mobile phone, to 57%. And on the other, the worsening – although it continues to show relatively good levels, better than in the OECD average – of indicators such as the classroom climate, bullying, and the feeling of belonging to the school.
Higher quality of secondary learning
The great disadvantage in the results in science and mathematics that both Spain (as even more France) show in primary with respect to the average of developed countries disappear at age 15, at the end of high school ,. The change seems, again, multifactorial. On the one hand, as a consequence of the evolution of birth, the weight of foreign students is lower in high school than in primary (although it is also increasing). On the other, the ESADEECPOL report, the quality of learning in the ESO in Spain, seems greater, due to elements such as the highest level of teachers of this stage with respect to that of primary school (which measures another International OECD test focused on adults, PIACC), and the increase in teaching hours in ESO (one third rather than in primary).
That jump in school pressure has, at the same time, a cost for students, the authors point out. And it is that “almost 30% of students end up repeating course”, thus increasing “its possibilities of abandoning the educational system prematurely, the biggest challenge of education in Spain.”
Losses of 7,000 million euros per cohort
The authors estimate that primary students in Spain are about 0.2 years behind the OECD average in mathematics. And they estimate, then discount social factors, that “productivity and employment losses associated with less qualified young people could be supposing a loss of salaries of the order of 7,000 million euros for each cohort of students in Spain.”
The report makes proposals to reverse the trend. In the first place, a battery of social measures, such as the “breakfast and“ generalized, free and well -financed school lunch programs ”, and the empowerment of minimum income systems and housing aid for families with children. And, at the same time, educational measures such as the simplification of educational curricula to focus more on a“ deep learning of foundational competences, including mathematics ”; Pedagogical and mathematical teachers, and the expansion of the primary reinforcement programs, both in the vehicular language for those who do not know it and for other basic competences, betting a priority for the use of class formats with groups of very small students.
