Monitoring Education Development

1. Monitoring Education Development Albert Motivans a.motivans@unesco.org UNESCO Institute for Statistics International Forum on Monitoring National Development: Issues and Challenges Beijing, People’s Republic of China 28 September, 2011

2. The UNESCO Institute for Statistics • Founded in 1999, in Montreal since 2001 • About 120 staff around the world • Mandated to maintain cross-nationally comparable databases for: • Education • Science and technology • Culture • Communication and Information

3. UIS mandate • Collects, produces and disseminates cross-nationally comparable data • Analyzes comparative data • Develops international classifications (ISCED) and maintains standards and definitions • Develops technical capacity within countries • Advocates for statistics as a tool for better policies

4. New policy challenges and data needs to monitor education • Learning outcomes What skills do adults or students acquire/maintain? • Complement measures on the quantity of education provision by assessing quality and learning outcomes • From indirect proxies to more direct assessment of skills • Equity and educational opportunity Who is left out from the benefits of education? • Measures that capture distributional relationships • Greater focus on the ability to disaggregate indicators

5. Looking at new data challenges through the lens of human capital • Economic growth, human capital and education • The concept of human capital is seen as an important driver of economic and social development • Links between education and growth are evident, but causality has been difficult to establish • Typically proxied by measures of education quantity or outputs, such as years of schooling or highest level of education attained among the adult population • More recently, efforts have been made to express human capital in terms of outcomes through the direct assessment of knowledge and skills • Equitable distribution of knowledge and skills has been shown to lead to more sustainable economic growth

6. Concepts and measures

7. How the world has changed since the 1970s Percentage of 25-34 year olds having attained upper secondary education Source: UIS, 2011

8. Educational attainment in Brazil by household wealth quintile Primary Secondary Post-secondary

9. Quality of learning and skills and human capital • Researchers (Hanushek, Kimko, Woessman, Barro) suggest that the quality of human capital measured by direct assessment measure has a strong link to growth • And higher quality of human capital translates into greater earnings for individuals over their lifetime • Moreover, a society with a more educated labour force can also expect faster economic growth even if returns come later • Quality, defined by measured knowledge and skills, can reflect a range of factors - family background, health, etc. but investments in school quality improvement have the potential to deliver large economic and social gains

10. International initiatives to measure skills among adults • Initiatives that focus on adult literacy and numeracy • National level surveys (National Adult Literacy Survey – USA) • International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS), Adult Literacy and Life Skills (ALL) studies (1994-1998) • Literacy Assessment Monitoring Programme (LAMP) run by UNESCO Institute for Statistics – data for four countries to be released in 2012. Addresses pre-reading skills and non-European languages. • Programme for the International Assessment for Adult Competencies (PIACC), run by OECD – 32 countries took part in field test in 2011. Addresses computer skills • Move from literacy as a dichotomous (literate/illiterate) concept to one which distinguishes between skill levels on a continuum (Level 1, Level 2, etc.)

11. Literacy skills and the unemployment rate Source: IALS, 1994-1998

12. International efforts to measure student learning outcomes and skills • Large wave of large-scale student assessment at the regional and national level during the 2000s • Measurement at different points in educational pathway • Grades 1-2 - Early grade reading assessment (USAID, RTI, FTI) • 4th grade - PIRLS (IEA) • End of primary cycle - TIMSS, SACMEQ, PASEC, SERCE • Lower secondary – TIMSS (IEA) • Youth (15 years) – PISA (OECD) • UIS Observatory for Learning Outcomes • Gateway to access information on national assessments and examinations (catalogue) and an effort to harmonise existing initatives to create a global database on learning outcomes

13. Early grade reading skills and gender Percent of tested pupils who could not read a single word of connected text 2nd graders score poorly in ‘learning to read’ which is a crucial obstacle to the next stage of ‘reading to learn’ * National sample ** Language-based sample B2 Beginning of 2nd grade E2 End of 2nd grade E3 End of 3rd grade Source: RTI in UIS Global Education Digest, 2010

14. 6th grade student outcomes and social gradients in Southern Africa Source: Willms, UIS, 2004 and Zhang, UIS, 2008

15. Thank you Visit the UIS website: www.uis.unesco.org Contacts for more information on: Educational attainment database f.huebler@unesco.org Literacy Assessment Monitoring Programme (LAMP) c.guadalupe@unesco.org Observatory of Learning Outcomes (OLO) a.vasconcelos@unesco.org International Classification of Education (ISCED) a.kennedy@unesco.org