The Minister of Education, Marco Antonio Ávila, attended the Education Commission of the Chamber of Deputies on Tuesday to participate in the process of the proposal that consolidates a single system of Teacher Evaluation, which was presented to the Ministry of Education last January.
Currently, teachers from municipalities and Local Public Services are evaluated by two different systems (Teacher Evaluation and Teacher Professional Development System), which is redundant, ineffective and incurs a greater fiscal expenditure.
Master judgment
The document seeks to consolidate these assessments, also incorporating important improvements for teachers’ professional development, such as improving the induction and mentoring program and strengthening the Teachers’ Teacher Network, for support and collaboration among teachers.
In a presentation in the Chamber, Minister Marco Antonio Ávila highlighted that one of the main features of the project is that it aims to strengthen the continuous improvement of teachers. “It is necessary to have information about how the profession is growing, with a sense of tending to improvement, which is an evaluation of a formative nature,” he said.
“Our profession has an element of great importance, which means that it is not done alone, not individually, but rather with others who accompany the process, in continuous improvement…). Our Government is committed to making progress in the development of professional doctor models, which must be joined”, added the minister. Furthermore, he explained that the decision is an act of justice.
The session also included a presentation by Lilia Concha, director of the Center for Improvement, Experimentation and Pedagogical Research (CPEIP), who highlighted that the project “intends to generate harmony between the evaluative dimension and the support of the devices and the accompanying teacher, understanding that; for the public policy, the evaluation provides meaning when it permits correction and learning.
New undersecretaries
The minister was present with three undersecretaries of the Ministry and two new authorities of the Education Commission, which took office on Friday: Alejandra Arratia, in the Undersecretary of Education, and Víctor Orellana, in the Undersecretary of Higher Education.
Alejandra Arratia is a psychologist at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and a PhD in Education from the University of Melbourne, Australia. He served as the Executive Director of Education in 2012 and has more than 25 years of experience in the educational field and in the public sector, particularly in curriculum and assessment practices.
Víctor Orellana is a sociologist from the University of Chile who has served as director of the Nodo XXI Foundation and a researcher at the Center for Advanced Research in Education at the University of Chile.
