Ligia Amada Melo, the former Minister of Higher Education, Science and Technology, says significant changes need to be made to correct the failings in the Dominican education system. She referred to the poor showing of the Dominican Republic in the PISA evaluations, the global assessment of 15-year old students in mathematics, sciences and reading. The Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) is a grading system overseen by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The DR and Philippines occupied the bottom ranking of the assessment of 79 countries.
Melo recommends eliminating the automatic promotion of students in the first, second and third grades. This dates back to her tenure as education minister in the 1990s. She says the provision was not applied correctly. Now students reach the fourth grade without knowing how to read.
The testing evaluates the ability to think critically and reason to solve a problem not only on a test but in daily life, such as at work. Melo says: “We keep teaching by rote, something that was in vogue 50 years ago, in spite of the new curriculum which requires competences.”
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El Nacional
23 December 2019