And it is that to understand the assessment of teachers that is going to be carried out, it is important to know the context of this case, since 54% of the students from Huila who took the icfes test were qualified with the lowest level, A-. Teachers to the ‘board’ for low level of students
Given this circumstance, the department of Huila, will evaluate the command of English in the teachers of the Public Educational Institutions.
The diagnosis
For this, the Secretary of Departmental Education, Tania Beatriz Peñafiel, announced an agreement between the Government of Huila and the Surcolombiana University, to initiate a diagnosis.
The entity made an analysis of the results of high school eleventh grade students and their performance in the Saber Pro Tests, finding that they come with the same low level.
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How is it graded?
According to Icfes, the test of this language is in accordance with the levels of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) for languages (A1, A2, B1, B2).
In this way, the Colombian Institute for the Evaluation of Education in Colombia, classifies the examinees into five performance levels: A–, A1, A2, B1 and B+. And it was decided to include a level lower than A1, called A-, because in Colombia there is a population that is below the first level of the CEFR (A1); This qualification corresponds to those minimum performances that involve the management of vocabulary and basic grammatical structures.
Similarly, a level higher than B1 was included for those students who pass what was evaluated at this level, called B+.
Are we wrong?
Faced with this situation, the secretary indicated: “54% of our students are in category A – , which is the lowest qualification category for the North American language and in the highest score, which is B 1, they are only 3% of the students.
The complexity of the case, adds the official, is that nothing has been done to solve this situation.
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The measures to take
Faced with this problem and with the help of professors from the Surcolombiana University, an agreement was signed for $255 million, which will be materialized by the professors of this alma mater.
According to Peñafiel, the 307 teachers who teach English in the department of Huila will take a test in order to determine their level of language proficiency.
Another aspect that will be valued is the pedagogy used by education professionals, with their apprentices. In this regard, the researchers would go to the classrooms of the different schools, where they would carry out this assessment.
The official added: “the idea is to leave this project as a baseline, to see if the teachers handle this language and if not improve this aspect.”
And if, given the case, the problem is in pedagogy, the aim is to improve the teaching processes. “We are looking for at least the cleaner and other officials to be able to say hello in English.”
In a month this assessment would be being carried out and the results would be obtained in November of the current year.