Learning Metrics Task Force presents recommendations on how to better measure learning

Over the last year and a half, representatives of 30 organizations met as the Learning Metrics Task Force (LMTF) with a common commitment to improving learning experiences and opportunities for children and youth around the world. Today the recommendations will be presented in New York City as one of the major contributions of the United Nations Secretary General’s Global Education First Initiative, which is also celebrating its one-year anniversary.

Through an open process of global consultation, more than 1,700 people in 118 countries informed the final task force recommendations. If applied, these recommendations could help to fill the global data gap on learning and support countries in measuring and improving learning outcomes. Briefly, the seven recommendations are as follows:

1. A Global Paradigm Shift: Shift the focus and investment in global education from access to access plus learning, and actively seek better data on learning outcomes.
2. Learning Competencies: Provide children and youth with opportunities to develop competencies across seven domains of learning, starting in early childhood through adolescence.
3. Learning Indicators for Global Tracking: Track a small set of key learning indicators at the global level, including traditional indicators such as literacy and numeracy, as well as new indicators to be developed. In particular, the task force calls for new global indicators to include a “ready to learn” indicator for early childhood; an indicator of skills and values youth need to be successful “citizens of the world”; and a simple tool to examine the “breadth of learning opportunities” to which children and youth are exposed through education.
4. Supporting Countries: With support from regional and international actors, countries should lead the process of diagnosing the quality of their assessment systems, convening stakeholders to determine priorities, and assessing the necessary technical and financial resources required to improve learning measurement and outcomes. An international, multi-stakeholder collaboration can help coordinate between existing actors and provide technical, institutional and political support to countries.
5. Equity: Focus measurement efforts on identifying and addressing disparities in educational opportunities and outcomes, particularly within countries.
6. Assessment as a Public Good: For indicators to be tracked at the global level, make assessment tools, documentation and data available as a public good. No country should be precluded from measuring learning outcomes due to financial constraints.
7. Taking Action: As a global community, take immediate action to ensure children’s right to quality education.

Read the full report of the Learning Metrics Task Force recommendations

Having gained considerable momentum for the access plus learning agenda over the last 18 months, task force members and consultation participants agreed on the need to sustain momentum and translate these recommendations into action. The task force will meet in November 2013 to build on this momentum and develop a plan for moving forward.

Local launches of the LMTF recommendations in 15 countries

However, there is no time to waste. Task force members and participants will share the recommendations in local launch events in at least 15 cities around the world from September through November 2013. The objective of these meetings is for stakeholders to consider how the recommendations might be applied to the local context and what next steps might look like.

To support national efforts, the task force will explore options for setting up an international multi-stakeholder partnership on learning. It is important to note that task force members and consultation participants did not support creating a new, large agency for this purpose. Rather, various models should be considered that would leverage existing national, regional and international agencies that already have the capacity for this work. Furthermore, the task force was clear that the critical work of addressing the global learning crisis should not stall while the multi-stakeholder mechanism is being established. More importantly, the education community should take immediate action by beginning to garner the necessary technical expertise, institutional capacity and political will for moving forward and ensuring that the recommendations are being put into practice so that learning outcomes can be better measured and children have better learning opportunities.