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Schools have the autonomy to define the evaluation criteria for the 2nd period that are best adapted to the fact that most classes were given remotely. The guarantee was given this Monday by the minister of Education during a visit to the School Center of Paços de Ferreira, which served to mark the resumption of classroom teaching for children up to the 1st cycle. Tiago Brandão Rodrigues ruled out the possibility of the tutelage issuing any guidance on how the grades should be given in the coming weeks.
Brandão Rodrigues understands that schools are “mature enough to understand how they want to assess their students”. “In this regard, we are very comfortable, school directors, pedagogical councils, teachers and educators in this country have known the rules and know all the protocols that each of the groups has defined”, he added.
The Ministry of Education will not issue any guidance regarding assessments. The 2nd period ends at the end of next week and the class councils will meet the following week, when students are on vacation, to assign their students' grades. On-site classes were suspended on January 22, three weeks after the start of the term.
Last year, the tutelage also did not issue any document on this matter, following the first confinement. It was even reported that the 2nd period grades would be kept in the 3rd period, which was later denied by the ministry.
The realities of schools “are all different” and, therefore, it would not make sense to have a national orientation, considers the president of the National Association of School Leaders (ANDE), Manuel Pereira. The evaluation is a “matter that must be of the schools' autonomy”, agrees Filinto Lima, of the National Association of Public Schools and Grouping Directors.
“We already had the same experience last year”, adds Lima, according to which the written tests will be, in this period of distance learning “less prevalent”, but dimensions such as the ability of students to work autonomously “more valued”. Dimensions such as presence in classes, participation and response to the challenges proposed by the teachers start to have a more decisive weight in the students' grade in the 2nd period, adds Manuel Pereira. After the transition to distance learning, "the evaluation criteria were revised by most schools", says the leader of ANDE.
Teachers "perceive that these assessments take place in a different context", believes the president of the National Confederation of Parent Associations (Confap), Jorge Ascenção, "and know that they must adapt" the criteria to the characteristics of distance education, but also to the subjects that could actually be worked on in the last two months. “You can only evaluate what is taught. But it was always like this”, he says.
At the end of the visit to the school in Paços de Ferreira – a municipality particularly affected by covid-19 at the beginning of the first two waves of the pandemic – the minister also considered that the second confinement “went much better” than the first in the previous school year , since “schools are better prepared” and “teachers have more experience”.
When the school closed it was still winter. The windows of the Paços de Ferreira School Center remind us of this: they still have snowflakes cut out of backdrop paper glued to them. They have stayed here since, at the end of January, the students returned home. On this Monday, when children up to the 1st cycle return to face-to-face classes, the sun announces the arrival of spring.
In the 2nd grade classroom, the Minister of Education asks students about the hygiene and distancing rules that remain in force because of the pandemic. “They are very compliant, professor”, comments the Governor to the head professor. They are seated two by two at the tables, with a clear acrylic separator separating them.
Although the use of masks is still not mandatory for children up to ten years old, practically all students in the 1st cycle of the Paços de Ferreira School Center are using them. Last week, the Ministry of Education had given guidelines for opening up in this regard, whenever the guardians wanted.
The masks are “a supplementary commitment for the existence of security”, defended, at the end of the visit, Tiago Brandão Rodrigues, repeating an idea that he has been insisting since the beginning of the school year: “Schools are safe places”.
Also the testing process for teachers and teachers, which begins this Tuesday, was presented by the minister as a "additional layer" to ensure safety in schools, especially important to "help us stop any outbreaks in those who are asymptomatic individuals .
Tiago Brandão Rodrigues stressed that the testing process is independent of the entry into service of teachers and employees. In other words, no one will be tested before entering school nor will they depend on a negative result to be able to work. Testing in schools began in January and “will now be intensified with another level of demand”. "There is no irresponsibility here," he said in response to criticism from the Left Bloc and Fenprof.
This Monday morning, the Minister of Education had announced that the vaccination of health professionals will start next weekend. The remaining details were sent to the task force created by the Government to organize this process. Tiago Brandão Rodrigues had little more information to add: vaccination should take place “simultaneously” for teachers and non-teaching staff and will be “gradual”, extending throughout the month of April.