What he says and what the Minister David's QX report does not say. Theory like theory, but practice kills us …
The QX report of Minister David, regarding the analysis and proposals to improve our education system, appeared. He says many things, others, just as important, ignores them.
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I will deal with the following chapter on pre -university education, in which I have 35 years experience.
The mission of pre -university education is correctly described by the report:
Mandatory pre-university education-pre-school-first-gimnazial-iceal-must transfer through education the eight key skills, through which graduates become (1) good specialists, (2) good citizens and (3) people with a good quality of life/satisfied with their own lives.
The eight (8) key skills are: (1) language/communication skills (literacy); (2) multilingual competences; (3) Stem competences (science, technology, engineering and mathematics); (4) digital skills, (5) life skills (personal/social/learning to learn); (6) civic competences; (7) entrepreneurial skills; (8) Cultural expression and sensitivity competences.
The problem is whether the proposals of Minister David to improve education are taken into account the proposed mission.
The current situation of pre -university education, beyond mystification and self -delay, is given by international assessments of the type PISA, TIMSS and others.
Here's what QX report finds
– Functional illiteracy in mathematics (cash) increases from 25% to primary classes, to 36% in the gymnasium classes and reaches up to 46% at high school level.
-at the level of adult competences (from 15 years+), the area of functional illiteracy in literature is at 20.1% of the population (internationally, the average is 8.9%), and in the area of numerical skills it is 27.5% of the population (internationally, the average is 8.6%); If we add the risk area (level 1), the percentages reach 37.1% in literature and 38.4% in cash.
– PISA tests show that Romanian students (at 15 years old) have problems to understand what they read (approx. 42%), make mathematical connections (approx. 49%) and to understand correctly and scientifically familiar phenomena (44%), in general, being the penultimate place in the European Union.
All these evaluations have been known for years, but no minister, government, Parliament have known or wanted to take the necessary measures to correct the education situation in Romania.
The report correctly mentions the potential causes of this state of fact:
- Curriculum too loaded, with materials, hours and contents.
- Unattractive manuals.
- Inefficient learning-learning methods (including inefficient themes).
- The evaluation system and “Olympics” type competitions do not favor all key skills.
- Particular meditations can affect the educational process for a long time.
- Children with special educational requirements (CES) are not effectively integrated into the education system.
- Increased school dropout
Who stopped the Lyta of Ministers from Education, for the last 35 years, to take the necessary measures to adopt a curriculum appropriate to the time we cross?
A school is not good or bad in itself. It is good when it responds to the requirements and needs of society at a certain stage of its evolution. Standing in the curriculum of 50 years ago is not just stupidity, it is an attack on national security.
The challenges to which school must answer today are: globalization, mobility of people- goods, explosion of technologies, digitization, innovation in most areas. In no case a 50 -year -old curriculum cannot serve the society to cope with these challenges.
Another principle of modern education ignored by Romanian education: the school must be folded on the inclinations, talents, aspirations of the students, not the other way around. Now the Romanian school is a bed of Procust, a mixer, in which all the students enter and escape who can. It is still said that the student is in the center of education, but no political authority has understood and has tried to change this cruel reality, in which the student is not in the center of education.
The school must work with the purpose: to learn to know, to do, to be, to live together. And the curriculum should include four dimensions: conceptual-theoretical, applicative-practical, transdisciplinary, continuous learning generators.
The gymnasium, possibly extended to the 9th grade, must provide the students with a minimum of general social survival culture, and the high school, the X-XII classes, be a pre-professionalization stage, in the profession chosen for the post-school stage.
Tell the report:
Graduates must be able to integrate efficiently in the labor market (level 3 qualification after the 11th grade, respectively level 4 after graduating from the high school) and/or continue their studies at post-secondary and/university level.
It is very well said, but how will the minister change the organization, the school curriculum, the training of the teachers, to achieve this objective? Most of the students who finish the high school now, but do not want or cannot go to college, cannot be hired, because they do not have the skills required by employers. It is not known how this state of affairs will change, the report says nothing in this regard.
But the fact that in the law of pre -university education, currently in force, no distinction is made between the vocational school and the high school technological chain, is it good or bad? What opinion does Minister David have to this absurd situation?
These principles and others are not included in the QX report of Minister David. That is why I am skeptical that something will change in Romanian education, after 35 years of inaction in which we reached the tail of Europe.
The solutions proposed by the QX report
Curricular reform. It must be initially targeting through the framework plans, the modification of the number of disciplines/hours, with the European limits (preferably around the average European values).
We have been waiting for 2-3 years new framework plans to repair the Romanian education. No minister came to promote new framework plans because the interests of the students, with the interests of teachers and unions, collided. The latter wanted nothing to change, in order not to lose the number of hours and rules, and not to be forced to adapt to a new curriculum, which means an effort. This is how we got to have 34 hours a week in the 7th grade, and in classes with teaching in the languages of nationalities, 36 hours a week. I mean 7 hours a day!
It is heard, but it is not known, that the new framework plan will contain 20 hours a week in the mayor, 25 at the gymnasium and 30 in high school. It would be better, but why don't the new frame plans appear? Is this important task again postponed to the future government? If the Minister of Education Daniel David remains, we will see if the interests of the students, or those of the teachers!
Also provides the QX report
The contents of the programs must then be focused on content relevant for learning and the future of the graduate, without ideological interference, coming out of the classic logic “hour and lesson”. A 25% of the time allocated to each discipline must be used for consolidation, remedial activities and the applicability of the skills acquired in daily life.
The proposal is very good. In the curriculum in Western countries 80% of applications, problems, exercises are related to real life, with events lived by students every day. It is not so, the applicative-practical and transdisciplinary dimension is ignored, almost the whole curriculum is conceptual-theoretical. Will Minister David succeed in such a curricular transformation?
The teachers must be prepared, so as to use modern teaching methods as personalized, activated and doubled by new technological developments, which prove effective and safe for children.
The problem is that teachers generally refuse additional adaptation efforts, and the unions play them in the street, defend them.
The solution consists in linking the salary to the didactic performance, evaluated by measuring the school progress of the students.
About these aspects in a future article.
