EduMin David: It's better to teach less but in a relevant way than more but poorly

The minister of education and research, Daniel David, on Thursday stated that, after the adoption of the new framework plans for high school, the ministry will work on curricula and contents, while specifying that the former represent a fundamental element, as the educational system needs more relevant contents.

Daniel David attended the official opening of the conference "National Forum of Good Practices in Education."

"As soon as the framework plans are adopted, a very important process will follow. In this respect, we believe that, at least to a certain extent, the RECRED project, the one we are presenting here today, is like a framework for the next steps, while, of course, we are also going to provide the budget for many activities that will be carried out there. As soon as the framework plans are adopted and will know exactly what the subject matters will be and how many hours we will work on the programmes and on the contents. The curricula is key here, it is the fundamental element. My message is that we need more relevant, more airy contents and that it is better to teach less, but relevant and well, than more, but irrelevant and poorly. There, the main change will be related to the fact that at least 25% of the time allocated to a subject matter will have to be focused on something else than we usually do," the minister of education and research argued.

According to him, after teaching, teachers will have to do remedial, "consolidation" activities for students who have not reached an acceptable level.

"We're doing very poorly on PISA, not because we don't have the skills, but the skills weren't designed for their use in everyday life," David explained.

In his opinion, the content needs to be designed in such a way that it also connects with university-level studies.

"Here we will create mixed teams, we will have teachers from pre-university, teachers from university, because the contents will have to be designed in such a way that they also connect with university-level studies for high school graduates who will want to study at university level. We will have models from two or three countries," the minister said.

He also stated that a fourth important step will be the one related to the training programmes for teachers, so that they can learn how to teach the new contents efficiently.