Tag Archives: educational testing

Following up on test results in Vietnam

Posted on August 12, 2015 by internationalednews | Leave a comment

Photo: Dao Ngoc Thach

In this brief post we follow up with Duy Pham on the issue of testing in Vietnam. When we last spoke with Pham, who is a former Deputy Director of the Center of Educational Measurement, of the Institute for Education Quality Assurance, at Vietnam National University, and curent doctoral student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, he explained that this year Vietnam introduced a new assessment that combined two purposes: high school graduation and university entrance.

The Ministry of Education and Training has released the results of the new assessment. The results show that the high school graduation rate dropped by 8% (from 99% in 2014 to 91% in 2015). According to Vietnam.net, “Of the 816,830 students who sat the high school examinations in July 68,700 failed, for a pass rate of 91.58 per cent, a 7.44 per cent decline compared to 2014 and some 6 per cent less than in 2012 and 2013. Students in high schools passed at a rate of 93.42 per cent while the pass rate for those in continuing education was 70.08 per cent.” Ministry officials attributed this drop in the pass rate to the increased quality of the new assessments.

For more information:

High school graduation ratio reached 91.58% nationwide (link in Vietnamese)

Educators lament as Vietnamese students score poorly in national English test

Educators say national-exam failure rate shows better discipline, less cheating

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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Posted in About K-12 International Education News

Tagged educational testing, vietnam

Scanning the education news from Africa

Posted on June 23, 2015 by internationalednews | Leave a comment

To provide links for our twitter feed, every week or ten days, we look for news, research, and other media reports on educational change and improvement from a particular part of the world (Africa and Middle East; Asia & the Pacific; Central & South America; The Nordic countries; Europe; or the UK and Canada). While it’s always hard to determine the “hot topics” through these “non-random” scans of traditional and new media, we’re going to start pulling together some of the links we find in these scans and posting them here a little more frequently. This time, the scan focuses on Africa and the Middle East, and over the past two weeks, we’ve noticed more stories about testing-related scandals than almost any other topic. Maybe it’s just exam season, but the stories have come from Egypt, South Africa, Algeria, Morocco, and Ghana:

Helicopters, scanners no match for Egypt’s exam cheats – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East http://buff.ly/1J8lT8Z
allAfrica.com: South Africa: Basic Education On Progress in Group Copying Investigations http://buff.ly/1GnglQZ
الشروق أون لاين Education Unions: “Protected and not afraid of punishment… those behind leaked exam topics on Facebook” http://buff.ly/1IoO6Ts
Exam Leaks Are a Threat to Morocco’s Education System. Morocco World News http://buff.ly/1H3yQ3I
BECE cancellation was a collective decision – Minister of Education | General News 2015-06-18 http://buff.ly/1Gnp59M

Unfortunately, extremism, in this case in Egypt and in Kenya, also continue to be in the news:

‘A trip to the farm’: Egypt canceled these school lessons to combat extremism | Al Bawaba http://buff.ly/1J8m9Fd
Education in Kenya Suffers at Hands of Shabab Extremists – The New York Times http://buff.ly/1J8vJI3
Kenya: Education crisis looms near border with Somalia as 2,000 teachers flee due to al-Shabaab attacks http://buff.ly/1J8vOLX

In addition to those stories, there were also frequent mentions of basic issues of rights and access to education in the Sudan and Algeria, education budgets and costs in Ghana and Ethiopia, teacher’s pay and teaching education in Uganda and Nigeria respectively. But no scan would be complete without a story or two on world rankings (Morocco) or educational performance (Nigeria):

South Sudan Struggles to Uphold Children’s Rights http://buff.ly/1LnZe5Z
1.5 Million Students Expected in 2015-2016 Academic Year http://buff.ly/1IoO2Dd
What is the actual cost of a high school education in Ghana? | Public Radio International http://buff.ly/1J8vAo2
Ethiopia’s unprecedented budget targets education and infrastructure | East & Horn Africa http://buff.ly/1LnYPkb
allAfrica.com: Uganda: Teachers’ Pay Not Poor, Education Official http://buff.ly/1dOySPt
allAfrica.com: Nigeria: Colleges of Education Teachers Beg Buhari to Implement 2009 Agreement http://buff.ly/1d69dRE
Morocco Lags Behind in OECD’s Global Education Ranking-Morocco World News http://buff.ly/1H3yWZ3
Standard of education in Nigeria has declined — Buhari – DailyPost Nigeria http://buff.ly/1d69gNk

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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Posted in About K-12 International Education News

Tagged educational ranking, educational testing, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Uganda

Growth in national assessments?

Posted on March 18, 2015 by internationalednews | Leave a comment

With the implementation of new state tests (PARCC and Smarter Balanced) connected to the Common Core in the US, it has been hard to avoid concerns about the quality and extent of testing in the US in recent weeks (including in Delaware, Minnesota, Ohio, and California among others). At a recent seminar series from the Laboratory of International Assessment Studies, however, I also heard reports about the marked growth in the use of national assessments in many other countries. Although the new state tests in the US provide data on the performance of individual students and schools, the 2015 EFA Global Monitoring Report to be released in April, will include data on the number of national learning assessments (designed to provide information on system performance) conducted worldwide since 1990. As initially reported in “Improving, not over-hauling learning assessments post-2015,” that report will show that the number of countries administering national assessments has doubled in the last twenty-five years:

Before 2000, national tests were conducted in:

49% of developed countries
34% of developing countries
6% of countries in transition

Between 2000-2013, national tests were conducted in:

82% of developed countries
65% of developing countries
78% of countries in transition

The FHI 360 Education Policy and Data Center (EPDC) also released results of the National Learning Assessment Mapping Project (N-LAMP). As described in a blog post on the key findings, the project reviewed data on standardized exams and assessments administered at the national level from primary to upper secondary education in a sample of 125 countries from 6 regions of the world. They identified 403 national-level learning assessments from 105 countries. The majority of the assessments (55%) were low-stakes national large-scale student assessments (NLSA’s sample-based assessments used to monitor the performance of education systems like those documented in the Global Monitoring report). Most of the remaining assessments were high stakes exams (mandatory assessments required for completing a given level of schooling or gaining admission to the next level). Not surprisingly, the project found that almost all of the assessments focused on “Literacy & Communication” and “Numeracy & Maths,” with more than half also addressing “Science & Technology.” Nonetheless, other domains were represented with 73 assessments addressing “Social & Emotional” domains, 33 addressing “Physical Well-Being” and 11 addressing “Learning Approaches & Cognition.”

Also worth noting for those interested in international assessments, Teachers College Record has a new theme issue focusing on PISA, “Moving Beyond Country Rankings in International Assessments: The Case of PISA.”

—Thomas Hatch

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Posted in About K-12 International Education News

Tagged Assessment, educational testing, PISA

Austria

Posted on June 6, 2013 by internationalednews | Leave a comment

Viennese reading test: Every Fifth Student Reads Poorly

Bernadette Bayrhammer, Die Presse (May 20th, 2013)

The results of this year’s Viennese reading tests are similar to those of previous years – with a little bit of hope. Approximately one in five 10-to 14-year-old student is a poor reader. In elementary school, the group of pupils at risk has declined by two percentage points, and remained about the same size at the academic secondary school and lower secondary school. About 40 percent of students in grade 4 and grade 8 are good readers.

For the test, 15,000 children fourth graders and 16,000 eighth graders were tested the third time. In addition, students who had performed poorly in elementary school in 2012 were tested, and these students provide positive messages. Students who were particularly poor readers in the previous year and were promoted, did well this year: 60 percent reached a higher reading level, and about four percent are now even considered strong readers. For this reason, there is hope that special promotion can work.

For more information:

Educational Standards first tested in Primary School

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Posted in About K-12 International Education News, Newspaper Articles

Tagged Austria, educational testing, Reading

Denmark: School Reform

Posted on January 26, 2013 by internationalednews | 2 comments

Anders Bondo Christensen
Photo: Klaus Holsting

The latest school reform proposal in Denmark calls for a 25-hour workweek for teachers, inclusion education, measurable goals, and a collaborative discussion about teacher training. Despite the fact that the reform has controversial implications for wages, work hours, and professional development, Anders Bondo Christensen (chairman of the Danish Union of Teachers) has garnered the support of the majority of teachers. Christensen is now hoping that Education Minister Christine Antorini will see that the plan is close to the government’s objectives.