UNESCO, UNICEF, and the World Bank have joined forces to close the learning data gaps that still exist and that preclude many countries to monitor the quality of their education systems and assess if their students are learning. The three organizations have agreed to a Learning Data Compact, a commitment to ensure that all countries, especially low-income countries, have at least one quality measure of learning by 2025, supporting coordinated efforts to strengthen national assessment systems.
In many low- and middle-income countries, learning data are not collected frequently and, in some countries, not collected at all. Even when data are collected, learning assessments may not be of high quality and are not always used effectively to inform decision-making.
As education systems progressively return to in-person instruction after school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for timely and quality data on learning and drivers of student achievement is more urgent than ever. It is critical for policymakers and school administrators to have this data to accelerate students’ learning recovery and prepare and support teachers.
The Compact offers a menu of evidence-based methodologies, tools, and solutions developed by and with developing countries. These can be combined in a flexible manner to help countries improve the quality, relevance, and timeliness of information from their national large-scale learning assessments. Also, as multilateral institutions working directly with governments in supporting the implementation of education policies, the institutions in the Compact agree to ensure that in those cases where there are learning data gaps or deficits in the country’s capacity to measure learning, its operations will support the necessary investments.
“Apart from issues with data availability and quality, constraints related to technical and financial capacity often hold back the effective use of learning data for decision-making,” says Stefania Giannini, Assistant Director-General for Education, UNESCO.
To support this objective, the initiative will strengthen institutional capacity at the country level for measuring and using data on student learning outcomes. It aims to build sustainable learning monitoring systems by promoting multi-year collaborations among development partners and countries.
The initiative will support countries to:
- plan, design, implement, analyze, and use results of large-scale learning assessment;
- produce repeated measures of student learning that are comparable over time and across countries;
- strengthen the link between information from large-scale student assessments and classroom assessment;
- support improved collection and use of census administrative school data; and
- support improved coordination, quality, oversight, and transparency of global efforts to measure student learning.
“Gathering good quality and comparable learning data frequently is essential to effectively implement policy measures needed to recover COVID-19 learning losses. Successful education systems focus relentlessly on learning, and if countries don’t know their students’ performance, they are flying blind,” stresses Jaime Saavedra, Global Director for Education, World Bank.
