Learning Assessment in Mathematics and Spanish Language During the Pandemic in Mexico

• In Event: COVID-19 and Mexican Elementary Education: Analysis, Alternatives, and Lessons Learned From the Pandemic

Abstract

The pandemic posed a critical challenge to maintain the pace of learning at school during 2020 and 2021; schools in Mexico were closed, and the Ministry of Education implemented measures to continue teaching classes through television through a strategy called "Learn at Home," in versions I, II and III. Through television, Spanish, mathematics, social sciences, natural sciences, and socio-emotional education classes were taught from first grade of primary school to third grade of secondary school. However, there was a lack of a strategist to evaluate the learning achieved by the students.
In previous governments, the National Institute for Educational Evaluation (INEE) was the body in charge of applying tests called PLANEA to assess student learning. Still, the current government of President López Obrador disappeared INEE, and the PLANEA tests were no longer used. So the progress of student learning is unknown.
The research was carried out by a group of educational researchers in Mexico. The research objective was to assess learning in Spanish Languaje and Mathematics during the 2020-2021 school year through the PLANEA tests in Spanish (language and communication) and mathematics for children in the sixth grade of primary school, the third year of middle school and, the third year of high school.
Schools from various states participated and, we obtained a valid sample of 431,568 students, 84.7% of whom belong to public schools and the rest to private schools.
Among the conclusions of the research, the following stand out:
• In all cases, for the different educational types and levels (at the national and state levels), students who attend privately supported schools achieve better test scores.
• The scores achieved by the morning shift students are always higher than those performed by the evening shift students.
• The latter, is explained by the socioeconomic conditions of the student's families. The privately supported schools were able to make the transition to the distance education model easier due to the requirements of connectivity and access to computers, laptops, and smartphones and the support that families could give their children.
• The learning assessment exercise is complex and delicate. The tests do not have a national or state representativeness to establish definitive conclusions, but they provide interesting clues to continue investigating the effects of educational inequality.

Authors

• Hilda Patiño-Domínguez
  Presenting Author

• Luis Medina Gual, Universidad Iberoamericana
  Non-Presenting Author