Revista ELectrónica de Investigación y EValuación Educativa

In the last decade, the results of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) have raised the debate about the quality of the Spanish education system, influencing public opinion and policy decisions. This study aims to analyze the impact the results PISA have had in Spanish society through the articles that appeared in El País (the non-sport newspaper with the biggest circulation in Spain) from 2001 to 2014, attending to the following issues: a) the press subgenres used to talk about PISA and its authorship; b) the evolution of articles from PISA 2001 to PISA 2012; and c) the frequency of use of the skills assessed by PISA as an information point. The results of our study show the great importance of PISA results as indicated by the amount of press coverage, especially since the 2003 edition, which was mostly reflected in descriptive and informative texts. On the other hand, the media ́s treatment toward the competences in mathematics, science and reading is shown, with greater relevance to the last in recent years. Finally, we conclude that press coverage has been a great contributor when it comes to conveying the results of PISA to the public, despite the inappropriate use that is sometimes made of the data without considering the limitations of the study.