Report on the costs and accountability of large-scale assessments in Sub-Saharan Africa

• In Event: Enhancing transparency and quality in educational assessments: The role of the international education community

Proposal

One strategic area that can help policymakers improve the quality of education systems is reinforcing their national assessment systems with updated information on costs linked to learning assessment activities. Most education systems use three main types of assessment activities that correspond to three main information needs or purposes: classroom assessments, high-stakes examinations, and large-scale assessments. Large-scale assessments provide information on overall performance levels and trends in the education system; when done well, the large-scale assessment results can inform important changes in policies and classroom-level practices and can efficiently capture progress toward learning goals.

Most large-scale assessments are national, measuring levels of student achievement in a particular country’s education system. National large-scale assessments are usually closely aligned with a country’s official learning goals, standards, or curricula. Cross-national assessments provide feedback on the comparative performance of the education system at a particular grade or age level(s). A few examples of these assessments include the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), the Program for the Analysis of Education Systems (PASEC), and the Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SEACMEQ).

The implementation of large-scale assessments of student achievement is probably one of the least expensive investments for a country when compared to other reforms within the education sector. Nevertheless, despite the efforts from many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) to strengthen their national assessment systems by improving their national assessment studies and by increasing their participation in regional and international large-scale assessment programs, scant published information is available on the costs of large-scale assessment activities in this region.

Without costing information, it is less likely that policymakers will be capable of planning budget adequately or seeing the payoffs of using learning assessment results to support evidence-based reforms to improve education systems. While these costs can vary greatly from one country to another due to specific national factors, similar analytical cost estimate efforts in other regions have proven valuable. They have helped donor agencies, international development organizations, policymakers, and other stakeholders improve national education budgets and allocate funds more effectively for learning monitoring activities over the past two decades.

Preliminary results from a study conducted by a major multilateral organization, which aimed to estimate the costs of large-scale learning assessment activities in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), will be presented. The objectives of this study are to:
1. Synthesize information on the costing of national and international large-scale assessment activities in selected SSA countries, including the planning, design, implementation, data analysis, and results dissemination stages of a large-scale assessment study.
2. Identify and compare the trade-offs of key large-scale assessment design and implementation features that directly impact costs.
3. Analyze the implications of the findings by drawing conclusions that can inform further policies on supporting the strengthening of learning assessment systems and large-scale assessment practices.

Author

• Marie Helene Cloutier, The World Bank Group