Vodafone Romania Foundation and Didactica Foundation are launching the www.scoalaprofesorilor.ro platform, a free digital solution for the management of teachers’ training. The project is mentored and financed by the Vodafone Romania Foundation with a budget of RON 264,300, through the strategic program “Connecting for Good”, and was developed by Didactica Foundation, with the support of Code for Romania, within the Civic Labs program.
www.scoalaprofesorilor.ro contains different sections for teachers, training course providers and managers of educational institutions. By using the platform, teachers can keep a record of the courses they participated in, can track their professional path and determine the areas they can further improve through continuing training.
In Romania, only 0.9% of adults aged 25 to 64 take part in continuing learning and development courses, according to Education and Training Monitor* (Source*, p. 5), while at European level, their share is 11%. Although continuing training is, in theory, mandatory, teachers face various difficulties: they lack access to the full range of courses available on the market and, in many cases, do not benefit from a well-defined professional path. At the same time, teachers’ lack of participation in professional development courses is one of the factors which contribute to the constant decrease in the quality of the educational activity.
The www.scoalaprofesorilor.ro platform features a friendly interface and is easy to use. To access it, the teachers must create an account, being then able to select the courses they wish to follow for the current school year. The courses are grouped in different areas and can be accessed for free or paid. If the teacher chooses a paid course, a reimbursement of the training costs can be required to school. The school is informed after the teacher finishes the course, which offers the managers of the institutions the possibility to keep a record of the courses the teachers followed and the possibility of suggesting them additional courses. Also, by following teachers’ preferences, suppliers can provide the best course offers based on their requests.
www.scoalaprofesorilor.ro also offers teachers, managers and trainers a space for dialogue to help make the professional tpath more efficient and improve the quality of the teaching activity. For teachers, the main benefit is the possibility to create and follow a learning plan, based on career development goals which are set for each semester. In turn, schools can better manage their teacher development budget and see teachers’ needs more easily, as well as their professional development which they can also manage more readily. The suppliers registered in the platform can easily see, based on the reports generated, the teachers’ development needs, from both the public and private sector, which leads to better planning and management of the course offer.
Vodafone Romania Foundation is a Romanian non-governmental charitable organization, established in 1998, which operates separately and independently from the company’s business. Over more than 20 years of activity, the Vodafone Romania Foundation has funded 1,168 programs run by 745 NGOs throughout the country, in the fields of healthcare, education and social services. The projects had over 3 million beneficiaries – children, young people, elderly, physically, socially or economically disadvantaged people. So far, the Vodafone Romania Foundation has invested 31 million euros in projects run by non-profit partner organisations. More details about the Foundation’s programs are available at www.fundatia-vodafone.ro, http://jurnaldebine.fundatiavodafone.ro/ și www.facebook.com/fundatiavodafone.
Didactica Foundation is the promoter of two major projects: the Romanian-Finnish Primary School in Sibiu (established in 2016) and the Finnish Teacher Training Centre (launched in 2018). The main activities target 3 categories of beneficiaries: the school’s pupils, parents and teachers. Inspired by the Finnish educational approach and starting from the Romanian curriculum, we use the Finnish methodology in our teaching activities, renowned for obtaining the best educational results in Europe. Our mission is to develop creative and curious minds, prepared for life, and facilitate the access to transformative education for teachers.
Code for Romania is the second largest civic technology community in the world, with approximately 2,000 volunteers across 12 time zones. To date, the organisation has already prototyped 115 digital solutions to solve problems of the Romanian society, out of which 21 are now live. Through the Civic Labs programme, Code for Romania aims to be the civic technology solution generator for Romania’s social problems. Civic Labs brings a practical contribution to solving real societal needs through an ample research process and through generating solutions with an impact at system level and measurable long-term results.
