Brazil’s Education Minister Victor Godoy said there is a challenge facing Brazilian basic education: bridging the gap between students in the same grade.
In a Tuesday (Sep 27) interview on public radio broadcast A Voz do Brasil, he stated that students often lack the knowledge required in their grade.
“Today there’s a wide gap. A 6th grade math teacher gets students with different levels of knowledge and they have no way of identifying this,” he said.
Addressing this issue is among the goals of the National Policy for Learning Recovery in Basic Education, implemented in May this year, the minister added. “It’s a comprehensive policy because it focuses on the recovery of students in all of its aspects: the knowledge lost, the dropout rate, and the development of social and emotional skills.”
The minister mentioned a new diagnostic and training platform, open to schools across all states and municipalities. The tool, he said, allows teachers to take tests to gauge students’ level in four subjects (Portuguese, Mathematics, Sciences, and English), from the first year of elementary school to the third year of high school.
“The app shows teachers what knowledge a given student should have but doesn’t, under our national curriculum. It can serve to help schools regroup students according to their level of knowledge. The teacher will find out what students don’t know how to add, from 3rd grade, 4th grade, 5th grade, 7th grade, 8th grade, and will regroup these students and step up their learning.”
According to Victor Godoy, the platform is currently used to assess and boost the recovery of over 6 million students.