Challenges and opportunities in using household-based assessments for an equitable world in East Africa

• In Event: Efficacy of household-based learning assessments in improving education for a more equitable world: lessons from East Africa

Proposal

The household-based learning assessment have gained acceptance in East Africa as a measure of learning. The data from these assessments have been used to shape educational policy with major programs being formulated to address the learning crisis facing foundational competencies in reading and numeracy. Even as household-based assessments gained this place on the policy space, it is not in doubt that the assessments have faced challenges in design and implementation. Goodnight and Bobde (2018) analyse the challenges of households-based learning assessments when compared with the school-based assessments. Household-based learning assessments are designed and implemented outside the government framework requiring double effort in gaining acceptance for policy engagements. Furthermore, the effort required in developing the assessment capabilities, and the extent to which the assessments can be stretched to assess complex skills beyond the basic skills of literacy and numeracy has been a point of discussion. Wagner (2012), has cautioned that the household-based assessments that mainly focus on foundational skills may or may not be difficult to adapt to measuring complex skills beyond the foundational literacy and numeracy considering the skill set of the assessors. Despite these challenges, household learning assessments have demonstrated ability to develop simple but rigorous tools that are comparable across boarders as demonstrated through the East African-wide assessments of basic literacy and numeracy. For instance, common items were made possible through items assessed in numeracy dubbed “bonus” questions that allowed the generation of large datasets for analysis of learning levels for various groups including gender, children living with disabilities and children in and out of school from rural, urban, high and low socio-economic contexts. Although it has taken a decade since the first household learning assessment was conducted in East Africa while focusing on foundational literacy and numeracy, the design and implementation of assessment of life skills and values demonstrates the capabilities of the citizen-led household learning assessment. The assessment of life skills and values is designed to assess adolescents aged 13-17 years, uses common tools developed using one framework, piloted using common protocols, similar sampling methods applied, and common data collection protocols with complex competencies (values and life skills). This new assessment demonstrates that despite the challenges that household-based assessments face, there exists immense opportunities for their use on measuring complex competencies such as values and life skills across different groups of population as cross boarder assessment. This design and implementation of assessment of life skills and values as a household-based assessment can be used to measure equity across the groups benefitting from education.

Authors

• Mary Goretti Nakabugo, Uwezo Uganda

• Martin Ariapa, Luigi Giussani Institute of Higher Education