Using assessment evidence to confront learning backwardness for an inclusive education agenda: lessons from Mexico

• In Event: Using assessment and research evidence to challenge the education status quo: lessons from Africa, Asia and Latin America

Proposal

Learning backwardness is defined as the lack of expected learning concerning the age and school grade of learners and is a global problem that before the pandemic affected 617 million children in the world (UIS-UNESCO, 2019). In the case of Mexico, learning poverty stood at 43.2% (World Bank, 2019). After the pandemic and according to data from the Independent Measurement of Learning in the Yucatan Peninsula (Mexico), a learning loss was estimated in a range of 0.34 to 0.45 SD in reading and 0.62-0.82 SD in arithmetic and an increase in learning poverty of 25.7%-15.4% in reading and 29.8%-28.8% in arithmetic (Hevia, Vergara-Lope, Velásquez-Durán & Calderón, 2022). Thus, knowing these data and having specific actions to reverse them becomes mandatory in the current educational agenda.
In this sense, it is vital to carry out national and international educational assessments that make it possible to demonstrate the intensity of the problem, that is, to identify the backwardness, poverty, and loss of learning of children, and that in practice these data are inputs for citizens, parents, organizations, and governmental and educational authorities, to participate in the search for innovative solutions to address the problems identified. These evaluations should move away from punitive use to formative use, generating social commitment to evaluation as a learning and social transformation tool. In this sense, citizen-led assessments have been implemented in Mexico characterized by (a) using valid, reliable, and simple instruments that allow identifying the level of learning achievement of children, (b) applying these instruments in households, child by child, including those who attend and do not attend school, and (c) mobilizing previously trained volunteer interviewers to ensure the quality of the data collected.
Once the results of the educational assessments have been identified, it is a priority to take the next step: to articulate these assessments with educational improvement, that is, to design, implement, evaluate, and scale interventions proposed by various social actors that focus on improving learning in school and out-of-school spaces, as well as on social monitoring actions. In the school context, we seek to recognize and encourage innovation by classroom teachers, incorporating them into discussions on how to improve policies focused on learning and the discussion on factors that intervene in education. In the out-of-school context, the current vision of participation, focused on the teacher as the sole determining factor in educational achievement, must be broadened. Regarding this issue, we have worked intensively on the development and scaling of educational interventions (Velásquez-Durán, Vergara-Lope & Hevia, 2021) that have demonstrated their effectiveness in the domains of (a) reading, where positive and significant learning gains in participants have been realised: 0.36 SD, and (b) mathematics, with 0.55 SD.

Authors

• Samana Vergara Lope Tristán, Universidad Veracruzana

• Felipe Hevia, CIESAS

• Anabel Velásquez-Durán, IIE- Universidad Veracruzana