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SECOND REGULAR MEETING OF THE OEA/Ser.W/XIII.6.2
INTER-AMERICAN COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION CIDI/CIE/INF. 1/04
October 18 – 19, 2004 15 October 2004
Washington, D. C. Original: Spanish
QUESTIONNAIRE ON CURRENT PRACTICES IN EDUCATIONAL REPORTING
Preliminary presentation of results
Technical Secretariat of the Inter-American Committee on Education
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QUESTIONNAIRE ON CURRENT PRACTICES IN EDUCATIONAL REPORTING
Preliminary presentation of results
Technical Secretariat of the Inter-American Committee on Education
The Questionnaire on Current Practices in Educational Reporting was sent to the heads of international relations or international cooperation as well as to the CIE delegates of the 34 national education authorities of the OAS Member States. The Technical Secretariat sent an electronic file of the Questionnaire on the 21st and 23rd of July 2004 and made a version available to the countries "on-line" day 3 of August of the same year. 32 national authorities sent their questionnaires to the offices of the Technical Secretariat, or they completed them "on line", between the August 11th and October 13th of 2004.
In the design of the questionnaire both the Technical Secretariat of the Inter-American Committee on Education and the Department of Education of the United States participated, contributions were also made by the Secretariat of Public Education of Mexico and the Canadian Council of Ministers of Education and Culture. From its conception, it was considered important, on the one hand, that the questionnaire asked the countries, at a basic level, about the production of educative information (to be able to have a baseline from which to identify the specific effort of dissemination) and, on the other, not to lose sight that dissemination requires those within an education system to decide what information is relevant, how it is produced and what actors and processes must be informed.
The structure of the questionnaire and those who completed it
The questionnaire is divided into 10 sections, each one begins with a main question.
The first five main questions have to do with public dissemination practices in general and are divided into five categories according to the type of information. The objective of each of these sections is to lay out the kind of information that gets reported, the actors involved in the interpretation of the information, the intended recipients and the dissemination methods used. In all of the sections participants are asked to provide information on the latest published reports (including title, year, edition and possible website).
The sixth and seventh questions focus on the existence of specific information dissemination practices aimed at families and schools. These sections seek to identify the effort governments have undertaken to disseminate relevant information for decision making among teachers, schools, parents and students. The purpose of these sections echoes comments made by experts during the launch meeting of the second phase of the Regional Education Indicators Project that was held in Cancun, Mexico, in June of this year. The experts pointed out the importance of using information about academic performance as a central input for reflection and action among educational actors, especially teachers and school personnel.
Table 1. Who answered the questionnaire?Antigua and Barbuda / Coordinator - Technical & Vocational Education & Training, Ministry of Education
Argentina / National Director of Information and Assessment of the Quality of Education (DINIECE), Ministry of Education
Barbados / Deputy chief education officer (planning, research and development), Ministry of Education
Belize / Education Officer- Statistics
Bolivia / Planning Officer
Brazil / General Coordinator of the Consolidated System on Educational Information (INEP).
Canada / Coordinator, Research and Statistics, Council of Ministers of Education
Chile / Chief Officer, Department of Research and Development, Ministry of Education
Colombia / Information Coordinator, Office of Planning, Ministry of Education
Costa Rica / Sub-director, Division of Curricular Development, Ministry of Education
Dominica / Senior Planning Officer
Ecuador / Director, Division of Statistics, Ministry of Education
El Salvador / National Director of Monitoring and Assessment, Ministry of Education
United States of America / Director, Annual Reports Program
Grenada / Education Officer – Statistics and Assessment
Guatemala / Public Information Consultant, Ministry of Education
Guyana / Chief Planning Officer
Honduras / Principal Consultant to the Minister
Jamaica / Acting Director, Planning & Development
The Bahamas / The Education Officer
Mexico / General Director of Assessment, Secretariat of Public Education
Nicaragua / Director of Public Information and Director of Prospecting and Policies, Ministry of Education
Panama / General Director of Education, Ministry of Education
Paraguay / Technical Officer, Ministry of Education
Peru / Chief of the Unit of Education Statistics, Ministry of Education
Dominican Republic / Not specified
St. Kitts and Nevis / Technical Coordinator
St. Vincent and The Grenadinas / Education Statistician
St. Lucia / Statistician lll
Trinidad and Tobago / Research Officer, I
Uruguay / Officer, Research Unit
The eighth and ninth questions refer to efforts to educate the media and representative bodies to ensure that they are adequately informed about the workings of the education system and can actively participate in the interpretation of this information.
Lastly, question 10 offers the ministries the opportunity to explain how the dissemination of educational information fits within the broader education policy framework. This section is substantively divided into three parts. The first part considers information as a possible input for key actors in education (such as, principals, teachers and educational authorities). The second part offers possible criteria for the allocation of resources based on educational performance. The third part seeks information for building consensus and collaboration among various actors.
General considerations
At this stage, the immediate conclusion is that practically all national educational authorities in the hemisphere disseminate, to varying degrees and in multiple ways, information that they have gathered. Countries devote important efforts to the dissemination of educational achievement measured by national standardized tests. However, there are cases where this information has little relevance for main actors and certain ethnic groups, as is often the case with many teachers and principals. Not to mention the added difficulty in the case of indigenous peoples and other ethnic groups. It should be noted that there is a scarcity of experiences of policies specifically designed to provide useful information to parents as well as legislators.
One issue that was unanticipated in the questionnaire was that in some countries local authorities bear the responsibility for the dissemination, collection and regulation of educational information, giving national authorities a minimum role in the diffusion process. The questionnaire does not explicitly inquire about the details in cases where the dissemination of information is decentralized. As a consequence, Chile, Canada and the United States noted that this was a shared characteristic among them. Chile states that the Ministry of Education’s commitment to the dissemination of educational information has led to the development of the Municipal Education Information System (SIEM), that offers educational information to municipalities via its website. The municipalities, in turn, take on the responsibility of diffusing that information among schools and communities. The Coordinator of Research and Statistics from the Canadian Council of Ministers of Education pointed out that although his responsibilities for the dissemination of information are limited, he could still offer some information on the general characteristics of the publications developed in the provinces.
The dissemination of enrolment information and basic educational indicators
The large majority of countries in the hemisphere has managed to develop diffusion of information activities that are created out of yearly enrolment and graduation registries in primary and secondary education. This information and the indicators derived thereof (called basic indicators in the survey) are traditional inputs for evaluation and planning carried out by educational authorities.
Only Antigua and Barbuda and the Bahamas completely lack the periodic publication of the enrolment figures and basic education indicators. Belize, Dominican Republic and St. Kitts and Nevis, on the other hand, do not mention any printed publications, website or other reporting method. Even though, 15 countries annually print and publish statistical compendia on enrolment information, there are few annual editions. Only three countries manage to print one thousand or more annual units, these are Argentina, Brazil and Mexico.
The diffusion effort regarding basic indicators is similar to that of disseminating enrolment figures. Thirteen countries reported that they publish compendia of indicators with editions with fewer than 1000 printed units, with the exceptions of Brazil (5,000), Canada (2,500), Chile (1,000) and Mexico (1,000). Dominica and Dominican Republic although stated that they publish basic indicators do not specify any publication nor a website or other diffusion method.
As it has been mentioned within the context of the Regional Educational Indicators Project (PRIE), information on education systems would have a greater impact if it can be converted into an input for the daily work of teachers, principals, families and communities, and not just national or regional authorities. Therefore, educational information put at their disposal should reflect both the situation in their community and in their schools. The countries’ information dissemination practices on enrolment seem to move in this direction, especially taking account that of the 30 countries that publish enrolment information 23 disaggregate this information at most if not all the following levels: municipality, locality or school (Belize, Colombia, Guyana, Mexico, Paraguay, Trinidad and Tobago and Uruguay are the 7 countries that do not publish information at any of these levels). On the other hand, it is important to note that 17 countries publish information on enrolment for individual schools. Contrary to what happens with enrolment information, there are few countries that publish basic educational indicators by municipality, community or school (only Bolivia, Costa Rica, Dominica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama and St. Lucia publish drop out and retention information for individual primary and secondary schools). It is necessary to perform a closer analysis of these 8 experiences in order to identify the way in which the dissemination of the indicators has affected individual and collective actions taken by schools, communities, families and local planning authorities.
Often, the greatest educational inequalities in the hemisphere are drawn along ethnic lines within nations. With this in mind, it is important to note that only 5 countries annually publish enrolment information disaggregated by ethnic group, these countries are: Bolivia, Costa Rica, United States, Guatemala and Panama. Other countries with significant indigenous populations collect and publish information on indigenous population served by bilingual-interculural modalities, without specifying the ethnic group of the students attending such educational services. Costa Rica, Panama and the United States publish drop out and retention indicators disaggregated by ethnic group.
The Dissemination of Standarized Exam Results of Student Performance and Educational Achievement.
Considerable effort is required to provide the results of national standardized exams, as applicable to primary and secondary school students. Of the 29 countries that produce this type of information, 23 have consistently produced descriptive reports. The circulation of these publications exceed on average, the copies of the overview of registration and basic educational indicators (there was an average of 3,695 examples for the 13 countries that publicized the results of standardized exams of educational achievement in secondary education.
Of the 29 countries that produced this type of information, Colombia, Panama, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay did not detail the title of any publication, the related Web address, or other method for the publication of the results. Special attention needs to be given to the sparse participation of actors, distinct from ministerial officials, in the compilation of the descriptive reports, especially among academics, the researchers and the even the teachers themselves (see Graph 1). Also relevant is that 20 of the 29 countries sent the reports to primary and secondary schools, 11 countries sent reports to the universities and 10 countries sent reports to Teachers Unions.
It is also important to document and analyze the unique experience of Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Grenada, Nicaragua and St. Kitts and Nevis, countries that involved the participation of primary and secondary school teachers in the compilation of the descriptive reports. These and other
practices of dissemination would strengthen the pertinence of the publicized information as the means for reflection on the teaching practices.
In regards to the international standardized exams, 12 countries participated in some of the exercises found listed in Figure 3. Eight of those countries published the results through printed reports, three are in the process of generating the aforementioned report and one country indicated that it had not published any type of printed document containing the results of the exam. The average number of copies of the six countries that provided information respectively, is 3, 406 issues.
Dissemination of Information to Schools and Families
Although 19 countries published education evaluation reports especially designed for schools, only 16 provided information on concrete reports. Thanks to the information provided by these 16 countries, 3 types of reports can be identified:
Statistical Reports: By means of those reports, Belize, Bolivia, and Brazil provided primarily statistical information concerning individual schools, (Bolivia gave 15,674 examples and Brazil 216,000 examples).
Reports on Student Performance: These are reports that national, state (provincial, departmental, etc.) authorities give to individual schools with information about student performance as measured by national standardized tests. Those reports can include information about the average performance of a community or region of a given school for means of comparison. In this vein, one places the Report of Results, System of Measuring of Quality of Education SIMCE, of Chile; The Report of National Evaluation of grades 2-4 of Dominica; the Report Cards with information on the performance of individual schools of the United States (shared with the public in general and to parents);the Results of School Advantage of México; School Report: Evaluation of School Academic Performance of Students 3rd and 6th grade of Nicaragua and other reports that were described but not identified from Canada, El Salvador, Honduras and the Dominican Republic.