Give quality education to children in Piaui Brazil

Ongoing educator training adds to the quality of education in Piauí State

The work performed by the Ayrton Senna Institute has altered the administration of education in partner schools and this has been reflected in the students’ learning. Based upon an initial assessment and management tools, together with the ongoing training of the education departments’ staffs over the year, the education networks have been working with indicators and targets that guarantee the success of each child and young person.

One example is the result in relation to the reading and writing of the students in the 3^rd grade of elementary education in the partner schools. According to the teachers’ evaluations, from February 2014, when the school year started, up to October, the children showed good levels of development.

With regard to reading, at the start of the year, one quarter of the students read slowly, syllable by syllable. The learning was so good over the year that, by October, this index had dropped to 10% and the proportion of children reading fluently had reached 68%. More improvement: the initial percentage of almost 60% of children who could only manage to read simple words fell to 20% in October, and more than half of them could also write words with complex syllables by then. Writing had an important highlight as well. Whilst 76.9% of the students could only write loose sentences at the start of the year, by October, only three out of every ten students still had this difficulty.

These are important victories that largely result from the ongoing training that the Ayrton Senna Institute teams provided over the year. In 2014, the central issue was the school curriculum and its implications in the school practices.

Here are some observations from educators working in the region:

“The texts from the ongoing training that cover the curriculum demystified lots of things that we hadn’t felt comfortable with up until then. A curriculum in our municipal education system was something that was still a long way away from being a reality. With this new knowledge, provided by the Institute, we can definitely work with the students’ needs and we will also be confident about what content and skills it will be important to develop within a specific period of time.” Silvana Pereira Maia – Teacher and Elementary Education Coordinator

“Studying the texts about curriculum led to a very important discussion on our school practices, making us take a fresh look at the purposes and the means of the education. From a broad perspective, from the classroom to the system as a whole, we are now able to see a vision of human and social development in our students in all aspects, and this has only expanded our sense of responsibility as educators, encouraging us to research and study the issue in more depth.” Francisco Herton Rodrigues Vieira – Municipal Coordinator of the Program

Links:

• Ayrton Senna Institute - website
• Ayrton Senna Institute - Facebook page