Starting with the 2024-2025 school year, the student’s personal portfolio becomes mandatory, starting from the preschool level, more precisely from the middle kindergarten group, the Ministry of Education established.
From autumn, every student must have a portfolio with all the results. Archive photo
Although the educational portfolio has been introduced in the Education Law since 2011, it has never been put into practice until now. From this fall, however, it appears as a new obligation in kindergartens and schools. Thus, starting with the middle group from kindergarten and at the school level with the preparatory class, until graduating from high school, each preschooler or schoolchild must have centralized data on all the results, diplomas and recommendations received during the years of study.
According to the Ministry of Education, the portfolio will help educators and teachers to notice “educational gaps” and to act for their recovery, students to choose the right college and career and parents to find out the real level of training of their children.
What will the portfolio contain?
The file will contain all the school results, respectively the matriculation sheet and the grades obtained at the national exams or the Olympiads. At the same time, the diplomas, certificates and documents received by the students for various activities will be attached.
“The educational portfolio includes documents relevant to the students’ learning outcomes:
– certifications showing results in study subjects, by years of study/levels of schooling,
– results of national assessments and recommendations for recovery of learning losses,
– products or results of the activities carried out,
– diplomas, certificates or other documents obtained following the evaluation of skills acquired in different contexts, formal, non-formal and informal”, provides the Education Law 198/2023, in article 98.
Although in many European countries personal educational portfolios have existed for decades, and prestigious universities take them into account for admission, in Romania the law does not specify whether they will have any selection role for admission to high school or universities, but only that at the end of middle school and high school, graduates will receive recommendations with a consultative role from school counselors, for professional guidance.
What parents and teachers say
The situation is somewhat paradoxical, because, as Edupedu pointed out, although the law stipulates that the portfolio is mandatory from the 2024-2025 school year, the regulation for the educational portfolio has not been published, and it will be ready by August 31 next year.
“In order to be implemented, we must also have the minister’s order that regulates the model and content of this educational portfolio”, Iuliana Constantinescu, representative of the Parents’ Association, explained for Antena 3.
“There we should also find the needs for support, for intervention, the special skills of a child, the needs to remedy certain situations, in order to know how we can help a child from an educational point of view”, she continued.
“Let’s use this portfolio at the end of the cycle, so that, I give an example: mom wants to make him a painter, but he knows how to hit the tennis ball with the racket. Let’s see what the child can do, what the child wants.” also explained Daniela Voinea, the director of the “Sfinţii Voievozi” School.
Regarding the method of drawing up the student’s personal portfolio, teachers prefer the digital method, because the physical files would take up a lot of space. The Ministry of Education announced that it has considered this option and that, within 36 months from the entry into force of the law, it will also be done in digital format. Until you throw away, the paper remains sacred…
“Article 133 – (3) Within 36 months from the date of entry into force of this law, the educational portfolio will also be created in an integrated digital format, as part of the Integrated Education Management System, administered by the Ministry of Education through UESMATD”it is written in the law.
