“We had to deal with the disruption of strikes and some technical failures, but overall it went well,” reported Filinto Lima, President of the National Association of Group and Public School Directors (ANDAEP).
More critical, José Feliciano Costa, Secretary-General of the National Federation of Teachers (Fenprof), questioned the purpose of the exams, claiming they caused more constraints for students and teachers without any apparent benefit.
“The conclusion is this: confusion, chaos, and students who, in addition to everything we have already described, took the tests on content that was not taught,” he explained, noting that the school year for 1st cycle students ends at the end of June, and teachers still have almost a month of material to teach.
Furthermore, since the ModA exams began, Fenprof has reported IT issues such as network failures, invalid access codes, and non-operational computers.
In addition to the reported difficulties, the union leader questioned the usefulness of the exams, arguing that the conditions of implementation were very diverse, making the results incomparable.
“The results do not reflect any reality; the way this is being applied in schools is not uniform, not even close,” he added.
During the three weeks of exams, Fenprof carried out a strike affecting all related services, such as secretarial work, monitoring, and corrections.
Without specifying, José Feliciano Costa noted significant adherence in some schools, and Filinto Lima confirmed that the strike had an impact.
On another note, the Fenprof Secretary-General stated that about one-third of schools had to suspend classes and other activities to conduct the exams.
According to the Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation, students must have a minimum of 180 effective days of school activities, and lost classes must be compensated.
Fenprof, for its part, questions how the compensation will be made and threatens to proceed with a strike if the school year is extended, but Filinto Lima downplays this.
“No school closed all day,” he initially stated, explaining that the greatest disruptions were in the morning, and in those cases, many schools organized study visits and other activities to compensate, prioritizing the classes of students who will take tests and exams at the end of the school year.
With the ModA exams concluded, Filinto Lima emphasized that the major challenge will be the final exams of the 3rd cycle, scheduled for June 20 and 25, and for the first time in digital format.
For the school directors’ representative, the ModA exams, which he says involved “a huge logistics very similar to a 9th-grade final exam,” helped schools prepare for this moment.
