Data Transparency and Utilization: Re-thinking North-South Dialogue on Learning Outcomes Measurement and SDG Reporting

Group Submission Type: Panel Session

Proposal

Relevance.
In the nearly three decades since countries committed to the goals of Education for All in Jomtien, Thailand, low- and middle-income countries have made considerable progress in ensuring that more students are enrolled in and completing primary schooling. However, despite promises to improve learning for all, UNESCO estimates that more than 250 million children are not learning the basics (UNESCO, 2012).

The 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals marked a new milestone in the global dialogue around the importance of learning, rather than access, as the central focus of education. Goal 4 for the SDGs pledges countries to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” (UNESCO, 2015). Specifically, countries have been asked to measure and report on the percentage of children and young people “(a) in grades 2/3; (b) at the end of primary; and (c) at the end of lower secondary achieving at least a minimum proficiency level in (i) reading and (ii) mathematics” (UNESCO, 2015). In response, the global education community, particularly donors and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, have mobilized to define and clarify how countries can measure and report against the goals.

Theory/Context:
Currently, a limited number of practitioners and policy makers have access to data on how well students are learning to read and perform basic math. As access to technology and availability of open data continues to expand, we expect increased demand for and democratization of information on student learning, particularly in the Global South. Drawing from research from and on both the Global South and North, the panel will reflect on the information gap and how this unequal access to data and information informs current research and practice in different country contexts.

Methods/Findings:
The panel will include an overarching introduction from USAID, followed by an interactive presentation on the Early Grade Reading Barometer (www.earlygradereadingbarometer.org) as an illustration of how open access data can be used to inform discussions on policy and practice in the Global South. A presentation from the World Bank will follow, documenting how the collection and use of reading assessment data has informed the design and implementation of programs in several countries in the South Pacific. Finally, the panel will conclude with a presentation from the UNESCO Institute of Statistics demonstrating how UIS is supporting the measurement and reporting of learning outcomes for the purpose of global monitoring.

Contribution:
The panel is a practice-oriented panel, with practitioners from bilateral and multi-lateral donor agencies, implementing partner NGOs and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, which is charged with reporting against the global goals. The presenters will draw on existing research on how decision-makers at all levels of the education system access and use data to inform policy and practice, including conceptual frameworks and research applied to both high-income (e.g. Manidach, Honey & Light 2006; Marsh, Pane & Hamilton, 2006) and low-income country contexts (e.g. Klees, 2017; Wagner, 2017).

References
Klees, S. J. (2017). Will We Achieve Education for All and the Education Sustainable Development Goal?. Comparative Education Review, 61(2), 425-440.
Mandinach, E. B., Honey, M., & Light, D. (2006, April). A theoretical framework for data-driven decision making. In annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA.
Marsh, Julie A., John F. Pane and Laura S. Hamilton. Making Sense of Data-Driven Decision Making in Education: Evidence from Recent RAND Research. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2006. https://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/OP170.html.
UNESCO (2012). Technical note prepared for the Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2013/4 Teaching and learning: achieving quality for all. Retrieved from: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0022/002287/228723E.pdf
UNESCO. (2015). UNESCO and Sustainable Development Goals. Retrieved from http://en.unesco.org/sdgs
Wagner, D.A. (2017). Children’s Reading in Low-Income Countries. The Reading Teacher, 71(2), 127–133. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1621

Sub Unit

• SIG: Global Literacy

Chair

• Mitch Kirby, US Agency for International Development (USAID)

Individual Presentations

• The early grade Reading Barometer: Increasing access to and use of data on learning outcomes - Helen Jang, RTI International; Amber K. Gove, RTI International; Joseph Destefano, RTI International

• Helping countries make better use of data on learning outcomes: Case of the Pacific Islands - Myrna Machuca-Sierra, World Bank

• Working with countries to define ways to report on SDG indicator 4.1.1 - Friedrich Huebler, UNESCO Institute for Statistics