Building MOE capacity in national learning assessments: Journey towards self-reliance in Ethiopia

• In Event: Better “M” for better “E”: What is the price of data ownership?

Proposal

USAID and Ethiopia’s National Educational Assessment and Examinations Agency (NEAEA) partnership on learning assessment began during the 1999/2000 academic year and have been conducted every four years. The main purpose was to measure the Grade 4 and Grade 8 students’ achievement in key curriculum areas such as reading literacy, mathematics, sciences, and social studies. It is a collaborative effort among USAID, subject matter experts and assessment professionals from the Ministry of Education. USAID has provided technical and financial assistance.

In this long journey of partnership, the objectives of identifying proficiency levels of students, tracing the attainment of curriculum goals, and diagnosing learning difficulties to make curricular decisions were achieved. Moreover, the sector is using educational assessments to evaluate the effectiveness of teachers, curricula, and educational systems or programs, to identify trends in educational achievement, determine the comparative standings of schools and regional states with respect to educational progress, and to aid curriculum planning and policy definition.
USAID has played a technical lead role in the first, second, and third learning assessments with focus on grades 4 and grade 8 in 2000, 2004, and 2008 respectively. This role began to shift in 2012, when the role of the national agency was elevated to a co-leader and USAID provided technical assistance in data analysis and reporting. In preparation for the fifth learning assessment, USAID offered technical support in review of the questions (items) and data analysis training for staff as they continue to expand development of similar assessments for grade 10 and 12, since 2010.

USAID also initiated early grade reading assessments since 2010 and after three rounds of this exercise, USAID and the National Education Assessment and Examination Agency (NEAEA) signed memorandum of understanding in 2017 to fully handover EGRA ownership to the agency by 2020. We have seen improvements in capacity as the agency also conducted early grade mathematics assessment on its own over the last four years. USAID is confident that the agency can handle all learning assessments as the need arise and USAID can continue to use data for its own programming from a central database hosted by the agency going forward. The Multi Donor Trust fund (MDTF), General Education Quality Improvement program (GEQIP). This MDTF relies on this EGRA and other Learning Achievement data for its fund disbursement with a third-party data verification by national statistics agency.

These assessments were used to design GEQIP packages in curriculum design and revision, teacher training, school improvement, supervision, and inspection. The 2010 EGRA was instrumental for the revised English and local languages curricula being used in the primary levels nationwide.

During these 15 years of partnership, the agency’s capacity to become self-reliant was realized and USAID and NEAEA have also reached a new level of partnership in Early Grade Reading Assessments. As per the current memorandum of understanding, the agency will conduct the 2020 EGRA on its own with limited support from USAID.

Authors

• Tahir Gero, USAID/Ethiopia

• Yilikal Wondimeneh Demissie, National Educational Assessment and Examination Agency, National Education Assessment Director, Ministry of Education, Government of Ethiopia