Everyone agrees that beyond access to education, the key is education quality: what do children actually learn when they attend school? And how do governments know that their investments produce the expected results in the classrooms?
In most countries, periodic exams and tests already take place to try to answer these questions. In Sudan, even if some forms of assessment already exist, results are often not used to inform policies and interventions.
That is why the Federal Ministry of Education of Sudan decided to develop a comprehensive system to assess what Sudanese children are learning in school. This system is supported by the $76.5 million grant that Sudan received from the Global Partnership in 2013 to implement its Basic Education Recovery Project.
Learning from experiences from around the world
With support from the World Bank as supervising entity for the GPE grant, the Ministry first put in place the architecture. It established a unit for National Learning Assessment (NLA) within the Department of Examinations in the Federal Ministry of Education, and nominated a coordinator and a task team.
An NLA Governing Committee (NGC) was also elected, comprising senior members from a variety of entities such as the National Center for Curriculum, Evaluation and Research, teacher’s professional unions, representatives from religious bodies and other departments within the ministry.
Select staff from the Sudanese ministry officials attended a regional “All Children Learning” workshop in Rabat, Morocco, and exchanged with counterparts and technical experts from other North African and Middle East countries.
The workshop was especially helpful in finalizing the test instruments --Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) and an Early Grade Mathematics Assessment (EGMA)-- using the experience of Egypt and Yemen as the basis for the Sudan assessment.
The NGC chose to focus the assessment on children in early grades, because evidence from other countries shows that the ability to read, write, and perform simple arithmetic functions are a key predictor of educational success later and lower likelihood of dropping out of school.
Building on existing capacity
At the start of the project, the governance committee learned from classroom-based examinations carried out in several schools. Given the strong capacity of the examination directorate at both federal and state levels, the NLA Board decided to build on this platform to design Sudan’s first national learning assessment: feedback loop between states and schools, preparation of examinations, record keeping at the local level and logistics and planning capacity at the state level
Pilot assessment in Khartoum
The NLA was first tested on a sample of 65 schools in Khartoum state across 7 localities, both rural and urban, and in public and private schools. The reading test was administered to 1,169 students and the math test to 1,167 students. Teachers were also tested to assess the quality of teaching.
Some of the findings from the pilot assessments were worrying. One third of students in the sample could not read a single correct word in a short text of 59 words. The disparity was great between girls and boys.
More than half of students couldn’t paraphrase a single sentence in their own words. This indicated a weakness among students to understand and summarize a text.
The results also showed wide variations across localities in Khartoum State, with students in some rural areas faring better than those in urban areas.
First rollout of the national assessment
Learning from the experience of the pilot, both math and reading assessment tools were adapted. Approximately 10,000 students across 468 schools in all 18 states participated in the NLA in January 2015.
A survey firm was recruited to support data cleaning and entry under the guidance of the National Task Team. Given the size of the country and ongoing conflict, the rollout of the NLA faced a considerable amount of challenges.
But thanks to the strong capacity and political commitment of the ministry and NLA bodies, the assessment was rolled out successfully. The results will be available in September 2015.
Assessing learning is a key focus of the GPE funding model
As the Global Partnership implements its new funding model, having a learning assessment system in place or a time-bound strategy to develop one is a key criterion for countries to receive the fixed part (70%) of a program implementation grant. The incentive part of the funding model, the remaining 30%, focuses on actions to improve learning outcomes.
The purpose of this requirement is to contribute to improve the availability of data as a tool to diagnose, draw evidence from education needs and challenges, develop relevant, appropriate sector strategies and track progress towards realistic targets so as to strengthen country-level accountability and the development and monitoring of education sector results at country level.
But more importantly, the purpose is to go beyond learning assessment data to inform educational policies and practices to ensure maximum learning outcomes in a limited resources environment.
In the case of Sudan, the NLA came at a crucial point as the country develops a sector-wide education plan. The learning assessment data and other upcoming studies will help the country understand the relative contribution of various inputs and educational practices that influence learning improvements and outcomes.
The Sudan experience, not only the learning assessment system itself but also its use as an initial diagnostic, can benefit other countries that struggle with the same issue.
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I want to specifically recognize the work of the following people, without whom this project wouldn’t have happened.
At the Federal Ministry of Education:
- Minister Souad Abdelrazig Seed
- Dr. Fayza Alseed, Director of Examinations
At the World Bank:
- David Johnson, who supported the country-led design of the instruments
- Sophie Naudeau and Shilpa Challa, who provided operational support to the roll-out of the assessment at national level