CREMONA – New Minister of Education, new report card. It’s not really a syllogism, but the Department of Education certainly likes to do and undo. The minister Lucia Azzolina in the midst of the pandemic, he did not limit himself to having the wheelchairs purchased, but thought it best to change the evaluation criteria in the primary schools, moving from numerical votes to pedagogical judgments with respect to the certification model of the skills acquired with the following wording: in the process of first acquisition , basic, intermediate and advanced.
Now the Minister of Education and Merit, Giuseppe Valditara seems to want to return, if you don’t have votes — at the time introduced to primary school by minister Maria Stella Gelmini —, to synthetic judgments: excellent, distinct, good, fair, sufficient, insufficient and seriously insufficient.
Furthermore, the conduct grade in middle school will be averaged with those of the disciplines and those who fail will not be able to access the following year. For now, these are hypotheses that await concreteness from the decrees once the parliamentary process has been completed.
There are many doubts about what seems to be a sort of return to order: «It is also true that the pedagogical definitions in place today in primary school are not clear for many parents – he reflects Barbara Azzali, principal of the Cremona comprehensive institute 4 —, but there is certainly a risk of ignoring the action taken in recent years in valorising the learning processes and not the outcomes of the knowledge acquired. As regards the conduct vote, I believe it cannot be comparable to disciplinary votes. The rationale seems to be to give teachers a tool to certify the need for a possible failure.”
Maria Giovanna Manzia of the IC Cremona 1 explains: «For many parents the summary judgments were not immediately understandable, this is true, but if we look at the evaluation aspect they are terms that represent the school’s need to evaluate learning processes and not simply cognitive performances. With respect to voting in conduct, I am against repressive actions that do not solve problems unless accompanied by educational interventions.”
Daniela Marzani, manager of the Cremona 2 comprehensive, underlines: «For now it is only unofficial news, but if it were confirmed it would erase the work of these years, but the very idea of a school attentive to skills and not just knowledge, evaluating processes and not results. For voting on conduct there is nothing new, the rule requires taking behavior into account, without talking about conduct. School can be rigorous without being rigid. What is striking is how, although the ministers have changed, the only ones who have not been consulted are the school operators».
