Improving Learning Outcomes in Catalonia, Spain

Executive Summary

The education system of the Autonomous Community of Catalonia in Spain benefits from a stable institutional and legal framework, high levels of participation across educational stages and a strong commitment to equity and inclusion. Over recent years, the system has undertaken important reforms and expanded investment in key areas, including inclusive education, teacher workforce conditions, evaluation capacity and vocational education and training. Recent agreements reached in 2026, supported by increased investment and multi-year commitments staffing, inclusion and vocational education, provide additional momentum for improvement and create potentially favourable conditions for strengthening educational outcomes.

At the same time, Catalonia faces important challenges. Learning outcomes have declined in recent years, socio-economic disparities remain substantial and schools are operating in an increasingly complex environment characterised by growing student diversity and rising implementation demands. The extent to which recent reforms translate into sustained improvements in outcomes will depend on strengthening coherence, implementation capacity and the effective use of evidence and resources across the system.

This report forms part of a multi-year collaboration between Catalonia and the OECD launched in 2025 to support educational improvement. It examines four interconnected dimensions of the education system: equity and inclusion, teachers and school leadership, evaluation and foresight, and governance and funding. These areas were selected because they represent key actionable levers through which Catalonia can strengthen the conditions for learning improvement: student support, teaching and leadership, evidence use, and system steering. Across these areas, many foundations for improvement are already in place. The central challenge is to ensure that these foundations are implemented consistently and effectively across the system, supported by strong co-ordination, evidence-informed decision making and sustained implementation capacity.

Equity and inclusion

Catalonia has established a strong foundation for inclusive and equitable education. A comprehensive legal and policy framework, the implementation of a tiered support model, sustained efforts to reduce school segregation and increasing investment in support services and staffing demonstrate a clear commitment to inclusion. The expansion of support for students with specific educational needs and growing engagement with families further reinforce this direction.

However, schools are operating in a context of increasing diversity and complexity, including persistent socio-economic disparities and differences in students’ mastery of the language of instruction, which together increase implementation demands and require consistent support across schools and territories. Differences in local capacity, resources and practice also contribute to variation in how inclusive education is experienced across schools, while segregation patterns, identification processes and resource allocation arrangements continue to present challenges in some contexts.

Priorities include strengthening implementation of the tiered support model, improving the consistency of identification and support processes, aligning resources more closely with student needs and sustaining efforts to reduce segregation and strengthen family engagement.

Teachers and school leadership

Catalonia has a committed teaching profession and school leaders who play an important role in supporting equity, inclusion and school improvement. Teachers often demonstrate flexibility in responding to diverse student needs, while schools frequently maintain strong relationships with families and local communities. Recent agreements and investments aimed at improving workforce conditions and staff stability also create opportunities to strengthen the profession’s attractiveness and sustainability.

Similarly, evolving classroom realities and increasing expectations regarding inclusion, well-being and educational quality are placing new demands on teachers and school leaders. Challenges remain in ensuring that initial preparation, induction, career development and professional learning arrangements are sufficiently aligned with these demands. Workforce stability, instructional leadership capacity and administrative workload also continue to affect the system’s ability to support improvement consistently across schools.

Future efforts could focus on strengthening professional standards, improving teacher preparation and induction, developing clearer career pathways, enhancing professional learning opportunities and reinforcing the role of school leadership in supporting teaching quality and school improvement.

Evaluation and assessment

The recent activation of the Education Evaluation and Foresight Agency represents an opportunity to strengthen evaluation capacity and evidence-informed decision making across the education system. Catalonia already benefits from substantial administrative and assessment data, increasing analytical capacity and an emerging culture of school evaluation focused on improvement.

These foundations provide favourable conditions for developing a more coherent evaluation ecosystem and ensuring that different evaluation functions contribute in complementary ways to system improvement. However, the generation, interpretation and use of evidence in policy and practice remains uneven, while foresight functions are still at an early stage of development.

Building on recent reforms, priorities include developing a shared vision for evaluation and assessment, clarifying institutional roles and responsibilities, strengthening analytical and knowledge mobilisation capacity and progressively embedding foresight within strategic planning and policy development processes.

Governance and funding

Catalonia’s education system benefits from a well-established governance and funding framework, supported by clear legal foundations, planning arrangements and growing evaluation and analytical capacity. Recent reforms and increased investment, including multi-year commitments to staffing expansion and inclusion measures, show a strong commitment to strengthening implementation, workforce conditions and inclusion across the Education Service.

These foundations provide important opportunities to support improvement. However, variation in implementation capacity across territories and schools continues to affect consistency across the system. Resource allocation mechanisms could be more consistently aligned with differences in student need and school complexity, while demographic change and the continued expansion of vocational education and training are creating new planning and co-ordination challenges.

Future priorities include strengthening co-ordination across levels of governance, embedding evidence more systematically in planning and resource allocation decisions, aligning funding more closely with student need and strengthening anticipatory planning and VET co-ordination.

Conclusion

The analysis suggests that Catalonia enters the next phase of reform with many important strengths already in place, including a strong commitment to equity and inclusion, an engaged teaching profession, growing evaluation capacity and a stable governance framework. Recent reforms and increased investment provide a significant opportunity to build on these foundations.

The central task for the coming years will be to strengthen coherence, implementation capacity and evidence-informed decision making so that existing strengths and recent reforms translate into sustained improvements in learning outcomes, equity and student well-being across the education system.