The president of the body that prepares the national examinations and their classification criteria, the Institute for Educational Assessment (Yahweh), considers that intensive training for these tests, which took over the schools, “is the biggest mistake you commits in practical classroom. “
Hélder Sousa, professor of secondary Geography, previously headed the Educational Evaluation Office, the body that preceded the Yahweh, regrets that the comprehensive analysis of student responses per domain, which annually is returned to schools, has not yet translated into overdrive the difficulties that there are identified, always the same from year to year.
Assume that the tests have not led to better learning, a situation described as the “Achilles heel” of the system. And as the provision of students has not improved, he admits that achieve the best results in tests essentially undergoes minor corrections in the tests or the classification criteria such as return happen this year.
In 2014 most of the disciplines of the secondary school exam averages rose, with the exception of Mathematics and Physics and Chemistry and a few more. Taking into account your ability to anteverem results by exhaustive analysis that have made the responses to surveys ever conducted says that this phenomenon is pass again this year?
This annual discussion of the ups and downs of results is very stilted because they value fluctuations that from a statistical point of view, have a very low amplitude. Just be a variation of eight tenths, half or even a value to be immediately with a feeling that is wrong, the system is improving or getting worse. Only these oscillations, and because we are talking about evidence that every year are new, they are perfectly natural and do not mean that there can be an improvement or regression. These conclusions are only possible when there is a persistent tendency for example results increases, however small. But what has happened is that the results have risen slightly, back down, back to rise and therefore the statistical point of view we have a tendency irrelevant.
Also wanted to mention that the the controversy [raised by the Chairman of the Scientific Council Yahweh], which was misplaced on the order placed by the Ministry on the subject of examinations, is it relates to something we already do for years and that is to maintain the stability of the evidence.
Stability in what ways?
In the dimension of the evidence, the difficulty of the items we have items with a varying difficulty, but the game remains the year to year, the type of items, whether they are multiple choice, whether they are extensive response, the type of exercises that are proposed, etc. That is, there is concern to keep the instruments for assessing stable.
What about the possibility of providing the test results? How do they do?
We can only predict outcomes with a high degree of certainty because students from one year to the other, not better, not worse. And because despite evidence being public, we try to be very similar to each other from year to year. If we know in advance that the students have not shown large differences in their performances, it is permissible to think that the race has similar characteristics the results will also be similar. It is in this perspective that we say we have foresight.
I’m not going to ask me to reveal the contents of the tests, but as these are already made for months I insist on which is your prediction about the results this year. Last year there were significant variations, for example the Biology and Geology that, after several years with negative results returned to a positive average.
is true, but I will say that when comparing only two years can have the feeling that there was a big jump when there is an increase of 10, 12 percentage points, sometimes for a fee. I realize that the media point of view, the concern is always compared with last year, but this is too narrow point of view of analysis.
I insist, do not expect big surprises in the results of tests this year?
In the secondary there are some areas that have been in care, which are mainly linked to the part of technology, physics and mathematics . And they worry us because there have been no major reason, especially in mathematics, an annual variation that while it is reduced, it has been in recent years always in the same direction, down. There are two or three years, we were generating a test that was reconhecidíssima the Mathematics Teachers Association, the Portuguese Mathematics Society, with an adjusted and adaptable difficulty, and that was generating average ratings of the boarders of the order of 10.5 10.6, which seems to me perfectly balanced.
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