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The Undersecretary of State for Education and Education, João Costa, blamed the Government of Pedro Passos Coelho for the fall in the performance of 4th grade students in Mathematics, in the international assessment Trends in the International Study of Mathematics and Sciences. [TIMSS] – look here. Nuno Crato, Minister of Education of that Government (2011-2015), reacted in a note sent to Expresso and spoke of “irresponsible and false accusations.” More: the former governor says that the reversal of progress in 2015 is the result of “a series of measures adopted in the meantime” by the current government.
“After almost a decade of continuous improvement that led us, in 2015, to the best international results in history, both in PISA and TIMSS, this is a decline that requires a very serious analysis”, you can read in the note . “It is regrettable that this analysis is avoided and is replaced by irresponsible and false accusations on the part of this ministerial team. And it is this team that has led education in Portugal since 2016 and the one that should reflect on its responsibilities. Never in the history of our democracy has there been a blame at this level ”.
Crato returns the accusation and points out the current Executive. “The reversal of the progress made in 2015 is undoubtedly the result of a series of measures taken in the meantime. External evaluation in the fourth year, which came from 2001 with benchmarking tests and then final tests in 2014, was abolished and was not replaced by any form of external evaluation. The requirement of more hours in mathematics and Portuguese and the frequency of study support have also been eliminated ”.
And he concludes: “The Curricular Goals, which were in force in 2015 and for which the students evaluated at that time were prepared, have not changed until today. What changed was assessment, or the lack of it, and it was ‘curricular flexibility’ and the vague nature of ‘essential learnings’ that abolished curricular priorities and generated a less ambitious discourse and practice, underestimating the Goals and greatly reducing its positive impact. In 2015, the 4th year students who filled us with pride had completed their entire school careers between 2011 and 2015, in a culture of demanding, evaluating and valuing knowledge. Students evaluated by TIMSS in 2019 did not have this path. This is what has to be learned from the lessons ”.
When the tape was released in 2015, Portuguese fourth-grade students performed better in math than their Finnish colleagues, for example, this Expresso article explains. In 2019 there was a decrease in the average from 541 to 525, which is still above the average of 500 points on the scale used by TIMSS, which goes from 0 to 1000. In other words, Portugal finishes in 20th position. a total of 58 participants. In 2015, our country’s 4th year students finished in 13th place. The international evaluation is carried out every four years.
