The Public Prosecutor’s Office is investigating the existence of jobs on the Internet that allow graduates of Novas Oportunidades to fulfill the program’s objectives and receive a certificate that recognizes the successful completion of their 12th year.
At the base of this process of validation and certification of competencies is a Reflective Learning Portfolio, which the student builds through a series of points to prove the existence of competences in the key areas for certification. Research on the Internet is requested, considerations on current topics, citizenship, reflections, framing of diverse themes in the trainee’s life experience, among others.
According to newspaper i, which today advances the news, the National Qualification Agency (ANQ) detected dozens of cases of trainees and former trainees who made their work available for sale on the Internet. The newspaper went to find out and also found offers.
He spoke via phone to a former trainee who asked for 400 euros for his portfolio, stressing, however, that the value is negotiable and adding that last year the deal was worth 500 euros, a price he reviewed in view of the crisis. The newspaper reached Paula Duarte through the ad placed by the former student on the Internet.
LuĂs Capucha, president of the National Agency for Qualification, confirmed to the newspaper that the technical and pedagogical teams of Centos Novas Oportunidades and ANQ itself detected and reported these practices that it considers fraudulent, but adds that «a certified candidate was never identified through the presentation of a fraudulent portfolio «.
ANQ also detected, during a program of follow-up visits to New Opportunities Centers last year, certified candidates based on work entirely removed from the Internet. The identification of these cases produced an orientation and technical indication sent to the approximately 450 existing New Opportunities Centers, documents to which the daily had access.
The note sent to the centers gives an indication of the need to reinforce, before the trainees, that the full transcription of online content for their portfolios reveals, at most, the ability to search the Internet and not the skills that are intended to be demonstrated.
