Policy Linking and the setting of Early Grade Reading standards and benchmarks: The Nigeria experience

• In Event: Early Grade Reading reforms in Nigeria: Streamlining efforts to achieving equitable learning outcomes

Proposal

"Policy linking is a method used to link different student assessments to a common scale" (“Policy linking for measuring global learning outcomes - UNESCO”) . It allows countries to use their existing assessments – sub-national, national, and cross-national – for reporting on global student learning outcome indicators, namely Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Indicator 4.1.1 (a, b, and c) and the USAID Foreign Assistance (“F”) Indicators. In October 2018, policy linking was presented and approved as a method for advancing the classification of SDG Indicator 4.1.1 for global reporting for aggregating and reporting assessment data. Nigeria is one of the two African countries that were chosen to pilot the proposed global proficiency framework and in March 2020, USAID funded a policy linking pilot in Nigeria. Through policy linking, countries set assessment-specific global benchmarks based on minimum proficiency descriptors associated with a common scale (“cross - national basis over time to monitor progress”) . This presentation will examine: How we can report on the level of reading amongst children with, different languages and cultural contexts, in a way that is comparable globally. We will also cover the processes, the approaches, stakeholder engagement, capacity building and institutionalization and scaleup opportunities by other developing partners such as Global Partnership for Education (GPE).

Authors

• Wale Samuel, EDC

• Lydia Onuoha Ezihe Onuoha, Creative Associates International