The COVID-19 pandemic is a worldwide ongoing
\nphenomenon. It has proved disastrous in all its social and economic
\nimplications. As for the Romanian education system, the pandemic has occurred
\nat a bad moment, so much so that the system’s chronic problem resurfaced and
\nbecame even more serious than before. Some of those problems were highlighted
\nby a survey carried by TIMSS for 2019. TIMMS is an acronym for Trends
\nin International Mathematics and Science Study. TIMMS is held in a similar way
\nwith the PISA tests; it is implemented every three years. IEA (International
\nAssociation for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement) has created
\nthe tests. In Romania, TIMMS has been implemented by the University of
\nBucharest. Results are far from optimistic for the Romanian pupils. Romanian
\n8th-graders are less competitive than their colleagues in Europe. Their average
\nscore accounted for 479 points in Mathematics and 470 points in Sciences as compared to the international average
\nscore standing at 500 points. Disappointing as it maybe, the result is in no way
\nsurprising. The crux of the matter is for us to detect what it is that we need
\nto take into account if we want to set things to rights. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Professor of
\nPsychology with the University of Bucharest Dragos Iliescu explains:<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The survey does not
\nreveal the reason why we ended up here, Of course we all look behind, saying to
\nourselves we may have reached such a condition because of the uninspired
\nreforms that have been made in the last thirty years. Yet we noticed a couple
\nof aspects where the intervention is relatively easy to implement, with no
\nterribly high costs to go with it. The survey points to the fact that you have
\na certain score and the score you get is associated with several other aspects
\nin the education system. Each and every child or pupil who was included in the batch was also supposed to answer questions, they are
\npart of a contextual survey targeting how she or he views school, how your
\nparents view school, what the washback effect is, of what they experience in
\nschool, in certain respects. His Math and Sciences teachers also answer
\nquestions that are part of a contact survey, the principal is also supposed to
\nanswer a survey. Therefore, we can also take those contextual aspects into
\naccount, which can then be identified as performance predictors. We have
\nidentified three such aspects, that is equal opportunity, infrastructure and
\nthe distribution of resources in the education system, the second aspect
\npertains to the school climate, the environment and the learning experiences,
\nwhile the third aspect has to do with the teaching staff’s recruitment as well
\nas their early and lifelong training, but also with the educational support
\nservices mainly targeting teachers. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In earnest, for a great many children, learning is
\nmarred by poverty, social inequality and all sorts of family problems. All that
\nhas a strong bearing on school results, which, for instance, leads up to
\nfunctional illiteracy. According to TIMMS, 22%
\nof the pupils are functional illiterates in Math and Sciences, as compared to
\nthe international average of 13%. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Educational psychology expert Dragos
\nIliescu: <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The 22%, with no exception, is made
\nof pupils coming from underprivileged backgrounds, they hail from families that
\nusually live in rural areas or in small towns, or in backward regions, they are
\npupils facing other problems, such as broken families, where parents have left
\nthe country. In four years’ time, when those pupils graduate from the 8th
\ngrade and when they are on the labor market, what are their opportunities and
\nwhat added value can they contribute to society? An unskilled workforce, of
\nwhich 22% does not even succeed to make the most elementary mathematical
\noperations, what jobs will they be able to have? What are the opportunities for
\nthose children? It goes without saying they won’t be able to finish school and
\nwill definitely fail in their baccalaureate exam. It goes without saying such
\nscores and such blatant lack of performance are also associated with school
\ndropout. Those children will never further their education going to
\nthe university and will only be able to do the simplest and the least skilled
\njobs you can think of.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Social and economic disparities are glaring in
\nenvironments where they are least expected to occur. We’re speaking about
\nlaboratory practical work, which came under fire since parents and pupils alike
\nrue a system that ignores practical work, laying way too much emphasis on
\ntheory. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Dragos Iliescu: <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The existence of a lab leads up to more practical
\nclasses, better grades and better performance in science classes. We’re aware such
\nan effect does exist. Yet at the same time, we do not know whether
\nperformances are exclusively the outcome of the existence of the laboratory. Concurrently,
\nschools with laboratories are usually the schools where pupils are registered,
\ncoming from well-to-do families. Those are the urban areas schools and schools
\nof the privileged urban areas. Therefore, it is difficult for us to realize if
\nthat is a real consequence of the fact that the lab does exist or whether, as a
\nside-effect, schools with laboratories draw brighter children anyway, or
\nchildren coming from affluent families.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Consequently, the backdrop against which education and
\nthe set of teaching methods are implemented is sometimes more important that
\nthe content of the courses proper. Which has been emphatically highlighted by
\nthe TIMMS tests. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Educational psychology
\nexpert Dragos Iliescu:<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In fact, the TIMMS surveys point to
\nthe fact that the curricula and the syllabus do not matter that much, and I am
\ngoing to tell you how I know that. One of the allegations quite often made by the
\ndetractors of those tests runs as follows: Romanian children’s results in such
\ntests are poor because the proper content is not being taught with us. To put it
\ndifferently, in our system, the content which is taught is different from what
\nis tested through those international tests. But here’s how we can do it. Take
\neach of the tested subjects and analyze if it is taught or not, in keeping with
\neach and every school’s curricula. And that is how we can actually detect the
\ntest coverage ratio through the national curricula. And that is how we found
\nout Romania was the country where the test had the widest curricular coverage.
\nWe have a 88% coverage of that. We teach 88% of what is included in the test, quite unlike
\nFinland, Europe’s leader regarding such tests. In Finland, a mere 41% of the
\ntest is covered by the curricula. So it does not matter what you teach, but how
\nyou teach it. Therefore, the massive difference between Romania and Finland
\ndoes not lie in the curricula. We should have had much bigger scores, as for our
\nchildren, that content is exactly what is being taught and which was tested
\nafterwards. The quality of teaching matters, rather, the creation of
\ncompetences matters, pertaining to mathematical reasoning and not to the rote
\nimplementation of several formulae.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
(Translation by Eugen Nasta)<\/p>\n
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Romanian pupils and the international assessment tests<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":83945,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42997],"tags":[31794,35726,28904,43853,35994,35433],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-143842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society-today","tag-assessment","tag-classes","tag-education","tag-scores","tag-teaching","tag-tests"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n