PISA 2025: Analyzing the Impacts of Educational Policy Under Kast Beyond Test Scores

Original article: PISA 2025: Más allá de los puntajes y el rumbo de la política educativa de Kast

By Eduardo González Navarro, History Professor, Union Representative of the Movement for Teaching Unity (*)

In recent weeks, the educational debate has once again focused on the PISA 2025 scores, frequently overlooking the material and institutional conditions under which education takes place within a market-oriented system.

While PISA does not solely explain the reasons behind the results, it provides relevant insights into three dimensions commonly referred to as «the school life in Chile»: staff provision, infrastructure and material resources, and teacher support and classroom climate.

Regarding staffing, PISA highlights a «perception of scarcity of human resources».

Thirty-four percent of students attended schools where directors believed that a lack of teachers impeded teaching. Although this figure is lower than the OECD average of 39%, it indicates that approximately one in three students learns in a school where teacher insufficiency is perceived.

While PISA does not directly measure the availability of substitutes, these may serve as one of the mechanisms through which teacher shortages are felt daily within educational establishments.

This relationship has been documented by Barrera-Pedemonte et al. (2025), who, based on a study conducted in four SLEP regions, found that prolonged absences and leaves led to active teachers covering additional classes.

This redistribution of work reduced available preparation time for teaching and increased the workload, contributing to a «vicious cycle of burnout» among teachers.

The second dimension concerns material conditions. Nineteen percent of students attended schools where directors reported that a lack of educational resources—such as textbooks, computer equipment, library materials, or laboratory supplies—hindered teaching.

In terms of school infrastructure—buildings, facilities, heating/cooling systems, lighting, and acoustics—this proportion reached 31%. These figures did not increase compared to 2022, indicating that PISA does not reflect recent deterioration but rather the persistence of shortcomings that affect a significant proportion of students and teachers.

The persistence of these issues stands in stark contrast to the recent trajectory of the educational system’s budget policy. According to calculations based on DIPRES data, the budget projected for July 2026 shows a 23.8% reduction in allocations for school infrastructure.

In SLEP regions, the decrease in infrastructure budget reached 28.1%. The situation in Valparaíso’s SLEP is particularly dire: the initial budget of approximately 800 million has been reduced to 80 million for 2026, which translates to about 1.2 million pesos annually for each of the 66 schools in the service.

It should not be overlooked that, according to Mineduc data (2024), 73.2% of SLEP enrollment corresponds to students from low or lower-middle socioeconomic backgrounds, surpassing both municipal schools (70.8%) and subsidized private establishments (38.4%).

In essence, the budget cuts disproportionately impact the less privileged sectors of society.

The third dimension relates to teacher support and classroom climate. In science classes, 86% of students reported that teachers show interest in each student’s learning; 80% noted that teachers continue teaching until students understand, and 81% indicated that teachers provide additional help when needed.

All three indicators exceed OECD averages. At the same time, 43% of students stated that noise and disorder interfere in most or all science classes, compared to 31% in the OECD. Thus, while teacher support has improved since 2015, the classroom climate has not shown significant improvement.

In this context, the financial restrictions imposed by Kast’s government for 2026 and the restrictive guidelines for the formulation of the 2027 educational budget and staffing are deeply concerning.

Ordinary 955 from the National Public Education Directorate stipulated that only those replacements deemed «strictly necessary» would be authorized. In Magallanes, communities and school leaders have reported severe shortages of substitute teachers and reassignment of special education professionals to cover absences.

Additionally, the Evaluative Council of the Public Education System (2026) identified the lack of recovery of resources linked to health leaves as components of the structural deficit of SLEP.

Certainly, the measures implemented in 2026 did not cause the PISA 2025 results. The test results reflect a scenario prior to these adjustments. However, the information suggests that reducing allocations for infrastructure and straining support and substitute management may exacerbate these issues and deepen educational inequality.

These findings challenge the neoliberal rationale guiding educational policies that treat staffing, support, and infrastructure primarily as costs subject to adjustment, without sufficiently weighing their pedagogical function.

PISA 2025 teaches us that it is time to question what conditions the country is providing to strengthen teaching efforts and the formative experience of children and adolescents.

(*) Eduardo González Navarro is a Doctoral Candidate in Education (University of Chile)