The National Mathematical Literacy Test will be available free of charge starting from the first half of 2024, for all the students in Romania
It will possible for primary school, middle school or high school students to be assessed in terms of their mathematical skills using the National Mathematical Literacy Test
The project is financially backed by Apa Nova București as part of its efforts to support a quality education for present and future generations.
Bucharest, December 4, 2023. AVE, together with BRIO, are working with the aim of developing the National Mathematical Literacy Test – a tool set to measure the mathematical literacy level of the students in Romania. Developed making use of financial backing secured from Apa Nova București, it will be launched during the first half of 2024 and all the teachers in the country will be able to use it for free.
„We are about to announce the results of the 2022 PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) and believe that, regardless of said results, we need to understand that they tell us the level at one particular moment. The important part is how we interpret and understand them and especially how we should act to improve them, what we are actually doing to find scalable solutions to an issue we knew about in 2018, as well, when 47% of the Romanian 15-year-old students found it difficult to solve math problems. AVE, with its mission to support the schools in Romania, focuses primarily on aiding the development of children’s skills. The integrated expertise in the Programme for the Transformation of Schools will serve precisely this goal: the students achieving visible progress in each of the eight key skillsets identified by the European Union Council, mathematics being one of them. Each child in Romania needs to have at least the minimum mathematical literacy level when they reach the age of 15, and this is the goal that brings us together”, stated Silvia Toth, AVE Educational Programmes Manager.
The National Mathematical Literacy Test: a standardised tool for measuring the mathematical literacy level in students
The National Mathematical Literacy Test will be a tool the teachers in Romania will be able to access for free via the Brio.ro platform and which is set to measure the mathematical literacy level of students, grades 1 through 12. As a prevention method, the test will be able to identify those at risk in terms of mathematical literacy and to monitor tailor-made intervention programmes for students. Furthermore, students who wish to use it will be able to perform a self-assessment according to their current year of study.
Employed by specialists in curricular development or educational policies, this tool will render a picture of the general mathematical skill level nationwide and measure properly and comparably each student’s level.
The mathematical contents taken into consideration are properties of numbers and operations with numbers, measurements, geometry, data analysis, statistics and probabilities or algebra.
“The National Mathematical Literacy Test is the first of this kind in our country and fully complies with the scientific rigors imposed by a high-quality assessment tool. Developed based on a well-established and acknowledged framework worldwide, the test has been meticulously adapted in order to suit all age categories, from the youngest pupils to teenagers. Its importance lies in its capacity to measure and enhance Romanian children’s numeracy skills, a crucial aspect for their academic and professional development. By means of this tool, we intend to provide a solid foundation for understanding numerical concepts, to foster analytical abilities and to encourage the practical application of mathematical knowledge in real circumstances”, said Gabi Bartic, CEO BRIO.
The teachers as direct beneficiaries of the National Mathematical Literacy Test
Although the end beneficiaries of this initiative are the students, next to the parents, the direct beneficiaries are the teachers, who will be able to use the test in class to identify the level and to develop mathematical skills among the students in Romania.
The National Mathematical Literacy Test will be available in two forms: a short one and longer one, and the platform will automatically generate a report specific to the type of test taken by the student. For the short form of the test, a skeleton will be generated, containing only scores and graphs. For the long form of the test, two reports will be generated: a skeleton one similar to the one mentioned above and a detailed one which also presents the types of interventions that can be conducted to exercise or explore in depth the objectives assessed by each individual content subcategory.
“Education is the core element and starting point for our support for this project. We believe that quality education, as defined in UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, is very important for our company since we are concerned with enhancing our employees’ skills both in terms of the need to create added value for our customers, and in terms of perfecting our present and future work force. Education helps diminish inequalities and achieve fair treatment at the workplace, two major goals for us”, said Irina Munteanu, Promoter of quality education from Apa Nova București. It will be possible for any teacher to apply the test starting from the first half of 2024, being developed based on the national test model employed in the USA to track the students’ progress and applied in the 4th, the 8th and the 12th grades.
About AVE (The Association for Values in Education)
The Association for Values in Education (AVE) is a non-profit organisation whose main goal is to bring the educational system in Romania to Europe’s top 10 by 2035. AVE wishes to support the transformation of the educational system in Romania into one that promotes respect, honesty, team spirit and responsibility. You can stay in touch with AVE’s endeavours by following the LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram pages.
Despre BRIO
BRIO® is the first and only standardised digital testing platform for the Romanian students. By means of the BRIO® school tests, Romanian students from grades 1 through 12 can objectively assess their knowledge levels in the main academic subjects and improve their exam performance. The standardised tests are developed based on scientific measuring principles, so that the questions, the scoring and interpreting procedures should be the same for all the persons taking the respective test. The score of a standardised test cannot be subjectively influenced, as it does not depend on the assessor’s leniency or severity or the easiness or complexity of the questions. BRIO® is approved by the Ministry of Education and Research, the Testing System being a scientific product designed based on the school syllabus in Romania and conceived by a team of teachers and international experts in testing and psychometry.
About Apa Nova București
Since 2000, Apa Nova București, a Veolia company, has taken upon itself the responsibility of managing the water resources, water treatment and distribution to consumers, the disposal of wastewater and rainwater from Bucharest Municipality. Throughout its more than 23 years, the water supply and sanitation system has been rehabilitated, upgraded and developed in line with the best industrial practices in the field, achievements translated, to date, into investments in excess of 750 million Euro.