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

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

The international education and donor community plays a critical role in shaping the landscape of educational assessments, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). However, the current environment is fraught with challenges, including information asymmetries around the technical content of assessments, cost barriers, a proliferation of various assessment tools with blurred purposes, and inadequate support for education stakeholders in improving the measurement of learning outcomes. These issues often result in a reliance on international providers, which can disadvantage national entities and undermine the development of locally relevant assessment systems. This panel aims to explore how the international education and donor community can foster more transparent, effective, and equitable approaches to the design, funding and execution of national educational assessments.

Key Issues

The panel will explore the following key issues:
1. Information asymmetries: A major challenge in the assessment landscape is the lack of transparency regarding the costs and content of various assessment tools. These information asymmetries can lead to inefficient allocation of resources and hinder the ability of LMICs to make informed decisions about the most appropriate assessments for their contexts. The international community can play a pivotal role in standardizing the disclosure of costs and content, providing clear guidelines that enable stakeholders to compare options and design/select tools that align with their educational goals.
2. Clarifying the purpose of assessments: The plethora of available assessments, each with different objectives and methodologies, often creates confusion among policymakers, educators, and other stakeholders. Without a clear understanding of the purpose behind each assessment, efforts to improve educational outcomes can become diluted. International organizations and donors can help by offering frameworks that clarify the intended purposes of various assessments—whether diagnostic, formative, summative, or evaluative—and by promoting assessments that are fit-for-purpose within specific educational contexts.
3. What we know about measuring foundational learning: Measuring foundational learning requires appropriate tools that accurately capture the skills and knowledge critical for early learning. Many assessment tools fail to account for local languages, cultural contexts, or age-appropriate benchmarks. International organizations can support LMICs by promoting assessments that are specifically designed to measure foundational learning outcomes, while also ensuring they are adaptable to local contexts.
4. Supporting local capacity for quality measurement: Improving the measurement of learning outcomes requires technical expertise, robust data systems, and ongoing support—all of which are often lacking in LMICs. The dominance of international providers in this space can inadvertently marginalize local organizations and professionals. To address this, the international community should focus on building local capacity through targeted investments in professional development, technology transfer, and institutional support. This approach not only strengthens national assessment systems but also ensures that measurement practices are contextually relevant and sustainable.
5. Promoting transparency and accountability: Transparency in assessment processes and outcomes is essential for building trust and driving improvements in educational quality. International organizations can contribute by advocating for open data practices, promoting the use of publicly accessible reporting tools, and supporting national efforts to disseminate assessment results in ways that are understandable and actionable for all stakeholders. By fostering a culture of transparency, the international community can help ensure that assessments lead to meaningful improvements in teaching and learning.
6. Providing better guidance and coordination: To navigate the complexities of the assessment landscape, LMICs require clear and consistent guidance from the international education and donor community. This includes coordinated efforts to reduce duplication of assessments, align them with national educational goals, and ensure that they contribute to a coherent overall strategy for measuring and improving learning outcomes. International organizations can also facilitate collaboration among different actors, ensuring that assessment initiatives are complementary rather than competitive.

The international education and donor community has a unique opportunity to support more transparent, purposeful, and locally driven educational assessments. By addressing information asymmetries, clarifying the purpose of assessments, building local capacity, promoting transparency, and providing better guidance, these organizations can help ensure that assessments contribute effectively to the improvement of learning outcomes in LMICs. This panel will share case studies and examples of successful initiatives, offering insights into how international support can be better aligned with the needs of national education systems.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Organizer

• Alice Cornish, Better Purpose

Chair

• Clio Dintilhac, BMGF

Individual Presentations

• Report on the costs and accountability of large-scale assessments in Sub-Saharan Africa - Marie Helene Cloutier, The World Bank Group

• A partnership approach to more and better learning data - Ramya Vivekanandan, Global Partnership for Education

• Strengthening African capacity for quality national assessments - Cally Ardington, University of Cape Town

Discussant

• Armando A Ali, PAL Network