Towards a more holistic assessment and monitoring unesco efa wg
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Towards a more holistic assessment and monitoring of quality education and effective learning Dr. Dirk Van Damme OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation
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My presentation for the 11th meeting of the Working Group on Education for All at UNESCO, 2 February 2011
Transcript of Towards a more holistic assessment and monitoring unesco efa wg
Towards a more holistic assessment and monitoring of quality education and effective learning
Dr. Dirk Van DammeOECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation
Monitoring and assessment are critically important!
• Education and learning indicators can help– To inform policy– To monitor standards and creating new ones– To identify correlates of learning (gender,
SES, language, regions, …)– To promote accountability– To increase public awareness– To inform political debate
• The way we assess education determines the way we improve education!
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Knowledge management is critical for effective change
• Education is often compared with the health sector in terms of– Capacity for change and innovation– Capacity for policy mobilisation– Capacity to raise resources
• Effective assessment and monitoring tools and, more generally, a more effective knowledge management system, with strong R&D base, might explain the difference
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Educational research and development
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Changing educational indicators
• First generation of education indicators:– input-oriented– rather simple, with lot of proxies and noise– still difficult to achieve in many countries
• For example reliable data on school attendance (as opposed to formal enrolment)
• Second generation focusing on outputs– Educational attainment data– Comparable definitions and methodological
agreement are crucial• For example development of ISCED
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Changing educational indicators
• Third phase: international, comparative assessments of learning outcomes– Examples: IALS, TIMSS, PIRLS, PISA,
PIAAC etc– Real-life competences lending itself easier
to comparative assessment than curriculum-based tests which have limited validity
– Conceptually and methodologically robust, despite many criticisms
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Changing educational indicators
• Comparative assessments of learning outcomes have become very powerful:– International measures of ‘human capital’
known to influence investment strategies– But also make educational inequity visible
and tangible: PISA is a powerful driver for equity policies
• New developments:– ‘Skills for innovation’: creative thinking,
problem-solving, ‘soft skills’, etc.
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Learning assessmentin developing countries
• Large-scale learning assessments are also progressing in developing countries– Often with support from intern’l or regional
agencies– For example: PISA 2009 administered with success
in Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, some states in India, some provinces in China, almost all LAC countries
– With some political will more progress is possible
• Reliable, state-of-the-art assessments of learning outcomes have proven to generate huge political energy and reform capacities– PISA has evidenced huge progress in e.g. Peru 8
1998PISA countries in 2000200120032006200977%81%83%85%86%
Coverage of world economy 87%
Learning assessmentin developing countries
• But there are serious challenges in terms of– Resourcing– Coping with language and population
diversity– Research and technical implementation
capacity– Further work needed on differentiating
between various lower skill levels
• Call for “smaller, quicker, cheaper” (SQC) assessment methods
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Assessment of adult skills
• Little progress in realistic assessment of real-life skills in adult population– Literacy assessments still based on proxies
• Lifelong learning: people acquire skills also outside formal education systems– Assessments can detect skill levels in adult
population formally considered to be un-educated
– Recognition of non-formal and informal learning outcomes is crucial for economic growth and social progress
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Level of skills
Cognitive skills
Non-cognitive skills
Non-cognitive skills also matters for crime…
Ever been in jail by age 30, by skills (men, USA)
Moving beyond cognitive skills
• Interaction between cognitive and non-cognitive skills seem to determine a lot of behaviour
• Identifying and assessing non-cognitive skills is an important challenge but can significantly widen our view on quality education– Opening up to ‘seeing’ and acknowledging the
importance of everyday survival skills– For example, informal learning of entrepreneurial
skills may help to understand real micro-level development
– Cf OECD/CERI project on Education and Social Progress
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