Families in Ibiza are calling for a broader discussion about education after the publication of the 2025 PISA results, arguing that school performance cannot be explained by what happens inside classrooms alone.

The comments come after the latest assessment showed that students in the Balearic Islands scored below the Spanish average in reading, mathematics and science.

Balearic Islands score below Spanish average

The PISA 2025 results gave the Balearic Islands an average score of 441 points in reading, 449 in mathematics and 471 in science.

Spain recorded 451 points in reading, 457 in mathematics and 477 in science.

The Balearic results therefore stood 10 points below the Spanish average in reading, eight points below it in mathematics and six points below it in science.

The OECD's PISA 2025 results also place Spain below the OECD average across the three assessed areas. PISA is designed to measure the knowledge and skills of 15-year-old students and is not an assessment of individual schools or municipalities.

Reading records the largest decline

The biggest change in the Balearic results was in reading.

The islands scored 472 points in reading in PISA 2022, compared with 441 in 2025, a fall of 31 points.

Mathematics declined from 471 to 449, while science fell from 480 to 471.

The regional education department describes the 2025 results as disappointing and has announced changes to the curriculum, including increased teaching time for mathematics and stronger emphasis on languages.

No single explanation, families say

Pepita Costa of the Federation of Associations of Families of Students in Ibiza argues that the results should not be reduced to one cause.

In her view, understanding the figures requires looking at how children learn, what resources schools have and what happens outside the classroom.

She argues that families, schools and the wider social environment all have a role in children's educational development.

Her comments are an interpretation of the results rather than a conclusion established by the PISA assessment itself.

Concern over early screen use

One of Costa's main concerns is the exposure of children to mobile phones and screens from an early age.

She distinguishes between learning to use technology and spending extended periods using smartphones or social media.

Costa argues that children also need time during early development for conversation with adults, reading, play, physical activity and unstructured time.

She says discussions about healthy technology habits should begin well before children reach secondary school and eventually take part in PISA testing.

Families also have a role

Costa says schools cannot take responsibility for every aspect of a child's education.

She is calling for greater involvement from families while stressing that this should not become an exercise in blaming parents.

According to the family representative, the amount of time and resources available to parents can itself be influenced by their economic circumstances.

She therefore argues that educational outcomes need to be considered within the wider circumstances in which children grow up.

Schools need additional support, families say

The federation is also calling for more resources inside schools, including support staff, guidance services and teacher training.

Costa points particularly to the needs of pupils arriving in Ibiza who do not yet speak the languages used in the education system.

She says these students, their families and teachers all require support during the transition into school.

The comments reflect the federation's position on how the education system should respond to an increasingly diverse student population.

Teacher recruitment remains a challenge in Ibiza

The difficulty of attracting teaching staff to Ibiza is not solely a claim made by the family federation.

For the 2026-27 academic year, the Balearic Government officially classifies teaching posts in Ibiza as positions that are difficult to cover. Seventy-five teaching specialties on the island have been included in that category.

The Government has also increased the financial supplement attached to those difficult-to-cover positions in Ibiza to €300 per month, compared with €200 previously.

The measure is intended to make it easier to fill vacancies and improve stability in schools.

Housing enters the education debate

Costa links the difficulty of attracting teachers in Ibiza to the island's housing costs.

She argues that high housing prices can make it harder for education professionals to establish themselves on the island and says that this forms part of the wider conditions affecting education.

The connection between housing costs and teachers' decisions is Costa's interpretation, rather than a quantified finding in the PISA report.

The official classification of Ibiza as a difficult-to-cover area does, however, confirm that attracting and retaining teaching staff is an identified administrative challenge.

PISA does not provide an Ibiza score

One important point for understanding the figures is the geographical scope of the assessment.

The results of 441 in reading, 449 in mathematics and 471 in science refer to the Balearic Islands as a whole.

They should therefore not be described as the average score of students in Ibiza or as a direct measurement of Ibiza's schools.

PISA results provide a regional and national picture of student performance and cannot, by themselves, identify the reasons for differences between individual islands, municipalities or schools.

Balearic Government offers a different interpretation

The regional Education Department has offered its own explanation for the results.

Education Minister Antoni Vera has attributed the weaker performance to what his department says was a reduction in teaching time for mathematics and languages under the previous curriculum framework.

The Government has subsequently introduced new regional curricula that came into effect in the 2025-26 academic year, with additional emphasis on mathematics and languages.

This is the Government's interpretation of the results rather than a conclusion independently established by PISA.

A broader conversation about education in Ibiza

The latest figures have therefore opened a wider discussion that reaches beyond examination results.

For families in Ibiza, questions include the role of technology during childhood, the contribution of parents, the resources available to schools, support for pupils arriving from abroad and the ability to attract teachers to an expensive island.

At the same time, the PISA figures themselves provide a more limited conclusion: students in the Balearic Islands performed below the Spanish average across all three tested areas in 2025, with the largest decline since 2022 recorded in reading.

What happens next

The next PISA cycles will provide an opportunity to see whether the changes introduced in the Balearic education system are followed by improvements in student performance.

For Ibiza, however, the discussion is already extending beyond test scores.

The combination of school resources, family involvement, technology use and the practical challenge of staffing schools is becoming part of a broader conversation about the conditions in which children on the island learn.

For now, the latest PISA assessment shows a significant decline in Balearic reading performance, while families in Ibiza are arguing that the reasons behind the figures need to be examined across both schools and society.