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Session Submission Summary

Progress on Measuring SDG 4 – Improved Methodology, Community of Practice, and New Results for Policy Linking on SDG Indicator 4.1.1.

Wed, February 22, 3:15 to 4:45pm EST (3:15 to 4:45pm EST), Grand Hyatt Washington, Floor: Independence Level (5B), Independence E

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

In 2015, the United Nations (UN) finalized the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to specify development goals to the year 2030. Goal 4 pertains to quality education. In 2017, the UN defined SDG Indicator 4.1.1 with a focus on the students reaching minimum proficiency in reading and mathematics at 3 grades: end of lower primary, end of upper primary, and end of lower secondary.
Between 2017 and 2021, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Institute for Statistics (UIS), U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), World Bank, U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation engaged in a process to operationalize a method for measuring and reporting on Indicator 4.1.1.
The results were the conceptualization of the policy linking as methodology with a framework of content standards and performance standards for reading and math in grades 1 to 9 called the Global Proficiency Framework (GPF). There was also technical guidance on how to implement policy linking known as the Policy Linking Toolkit (PLT).
The World Bank, UIS, USAID, and FCDO supported the piloting of policy linking from 2019 to 2021. In total, 11 in-person or virtual pilot policy linking workshops took place in 10 countries. Consequently, the UN awarded Tier 1 status to Indicator 4.1.1, which meant that the indicator had an accepted methodology, standards, and data for reporting.
In 2022, the development of policy linking continued with 1) A UIS-sponsored revised Policy Linking Toolkit based on the experiences of implementing the method since 2019, 2) the creation of a UIS, Bill and Melinda Gates, and USAID-supported community of practice to provide a space for learning and sharing about the method’s use by donors, implementing partners, and governments, and 3) policy linking workshops to set benchmarks for proficiency on a national and sub-national assessments using the GPF.
The panel aligns with CIES 2023’s second sub-theme on environmental sustainability, specifically, the sub-theme’s focus on progress related to SDG 4. The panel will present 1) the activities and outcomes of the policy linking community of practice to support its ongoing around the world, 2) the implementation and results for policy linking workshops applied at the provincial and national levels in a country, and 3) the revision of the technical guidance for policy linking based on the activities and workshops.
The policy linking method links different assessments to the GPF and establishes global benchmarks for Global Proficiency Levels (GPLs) that permit estimates of the proportion of students who meet global minimum proficiency in reading and math. The method is implemented through a four- or five-day workshop in which facilitators lead groups of panelists (15 panelists per subject and grade) through the three tasks of policy linking: 1) check the alignment of the assessments to the GPF using a standardized method, 2) match the assessment items to the GPF levels and descriptors, and 3) set global benchmarks on the assessments using a standardized method.
The assessment data for the policy linking workshops are from national and sub-national assessments. Both assessments used representative samples of schools and students. The national assessment covered reading in three languages and math, while the sub-national assessment covered reading in two languages and math. The policy linking workshops applied benchmarks to the national assessment data to determine the percentage of students who achieved minimum proficiency in reading and mathematics. In addition, the workshops produced standard errors of the benchmarks, inter-rater consistency of agreement for the panel on item ratings, and intra-rater consistency of agreement.
The research provides the most recent developments on the policy linking methodology and recent results for global minimum proficiency in reading and mathematics related to SDG Indicator 4.1.1. The methods and results will permit an understanding of how UIS and USAID will continue to support the development of policy linking, conclusions about the proportion of students who are minimally proficient in reading and math, and how previous policy linking workshops have refined the implementation of the method.
The panel will present findings through four papers.
1. Revised Technical Guidance for Policy Linking. The paper will present the UIS-sponsored revised and strengthened Policy Linking Toolkit, with changes based on the experiences of implementing partners using the method across the world.
2. A True Global Good: Building a Community Focused on Learning. The paper will present rationale for establishing a Community of Practice for policy linking and how it will advance understanding of the method among countries, institutions, and organizations using it.
3. Implementing Policy Linking in a Decentralized Education System. The paper will explain how the policy linking method was applied in a decentralized education system in 2022 at the national and provincial levels.
4. Students’ Achievement of Reading and Math Proficiency for SDG 4 on Provincial and National Assessments. The paper will provide the quantitative results for the policy linking workshops on sub-national and national assessments in the same country.

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