| Professionals disagree with government on evaluation of Novas Oportunidades/New Opportunities. | | Print | |
| Carlos Ribeiro | 17.02.2013 | National Affairs - Interviews [en] |
After the closing of the Centros Novas Oportunidades/New Opportunities Centers (CNOs) in Portugal, we interviewed Sérgio Rodrigues, President of the ANPEFA - Associação Nacional de Profissionais de Educação e Formação de Adultos / National Association of Adult Education and Training Professionals, an association created late in 2011 to contribute to the development of adult education and training policies and to represent the interests of the professionals at the closed centers.
What changes were made by the current government officials in the Portuguese RVCC Recognition, Validation, and Certification System?
As the public is aware, in 2011 there was a change in the Portuguese political panorama, with the fall of the socialist government and the scheduling of early elections. The current government has always made denigrating remarks about the New Opportunities Initiative, revealing a serious ideological bias. The Prime Minister and the Minister of Education have created a scenario that does not accord with the facts. At this time a discussion is under way concerning the act that will create the 120 new Centros de Qualificação e Ensino Profissional / Qualification and Professional Education Centers (CQEP) that are scheduled to replace the 500 CNOs. Now that we are familiar with the draft act, we are wondering about the 18 months that are required in order to present the new Centers, which will not go into operation until the beginning of September. In other words, between March and September there will be no answers for citizens who want to qualify.
Do you agree that there was a dumbing-down and that the process leading to certifications equivalent to academic diplomas lacked quality and indicated a lack of scientific and technical rigor? Or was it the almost total absence of effect on adult employability that condemned the system?
To date there is not a single evaluation or study that proves the existence of the dumbing-down alleged by the government officials. A study made by the Instituto Superior Técnico/Advanced Technical Institute showed that there had been no effect on employability or increase in salaries of the participants in RVCC procedures. Our association made a technical analysis of this study, and verified that the control groups, which make it possible to compare data, were not appropriate. We sent our analysis to the Ministry of Education, but have not received any feedback. Only the Parliamentary Committee on Education was interested in the analysis and asked us to attend a hearing. Another outside evaluation made by the Catholic University of Portugal and published by UNESCO noted quite positive effects in the use and mastery of information and communication technologies and an increase in the self-confidence of the participants. This later indicator, despite its denigration by the Prime Minister, is, as we know, a generator of new learning and an agent for the empowerment of a more active citizenship.
What type of training was actually given to the professionals in this area of activity in order to ensure the quality that is indispensable for working with adults in order to impart the respective competencies?
Adult Education and Training in general and the development of the RVCC procedures represented an “amazing new world” for many professionals, a large part of whom came from the social and human sciences and the education sciences. Free from the defects of the formal academic system, they easily grasped the paradigm of life-long learning and the contexts of formal, non-formal, and informal learning. ANQEP, the Agência Nacional para a Qualificação e Ensino Profissional/National Agency for Classification and Professional Training, developed training plans for these professionals, focusing on benchmarks of key competences and development of portfolios reflecting learning. However, much of the training of the professionals was provided in a work context, through sharing of experiences and best practices. We can say that Portugal now has a group of professionals who are very well prepared to operate in the area of adult education. Unfortunately, most of them are unemployed because of the closing of the CNOs.
If you had to make suggestions to other countries that are implementing this type of system concerning the teams of professionals who are working in this field, what recommendation would you make to ensure that this system would in fact be one of the factors of success in the structuring variables of the system?
It is important to promote networking and the sharing of best practices. The ANPEFA organization, for example, originated in one of these networks. Ultimately, it is important to develop vigorous continuing evaluation mechanisms. In Portugal, through the Catholic University of Portugal, many CNOs adhered to the CAF (Common Assessment Framework). It is unfortunate that because of the abolition of the CNOs the measures to be applied as the result of the initial evaluations were not put into practice. This fact leads us to a final suggestion: education and training policies must not be dependent on contract programs that ultimately create a risk for the durability of the system, the emancipation of its professionals, and the results that are to be achieved. |
