According to a review undertaken by Charlotte Waters at the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), the citizen-led approach being used in India, Mali, Senegal, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda is yielding reliable information about children’s basic learning levels, measuring change in these levels and raising awareness of local issues.
The ACER review addresses four citizen-led, household-based assessments: the Annual Status of Education Report in India, Beekunko in Mali, Jangandoo in Senegal, and Uwezo in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. ACER is providing support in terms of capacity building and is in negotiations to provide similar support to ASER-Pakistan, a citizen-led assessment organisation modeled on ASER India.
According to Ms Waters, ‘The “citizenled” description refers not only to the fact that the data collection activities are completed by volunteers in each district, but also to the focus on local data collection in a way that engages locals, and thereby raises awareness of local issues of schooling and learning levels, and triggers discussion about possible solutions to these issues.’
With more than 600 districts, each with anywhere between 1000 and 3000 schools, the Annual Status of Education Report is not simply a national survey, but also away to build traction in every district through a citizen-led, household-based approach.
The survey focuses on India’s 575 or so rural districts, and works with local partner institutions or organisations to sample about 30 villages from the census for each district, with partners then the survey with a sample of about 20 households from each village.
The sampling approach enables the collection of representative information about the basic reading, arithmetic and schooling experiences for between 500 000 and 600 000 school-aged children.
Ms Waters said the Annual Status of Education Report has had an influence at the state level in India, with many state programs now aimed at improving learning outcomes in response to its results. The regular assessment of student learning outcomes is becoming a feature of state systems, and several states are now using similar tools to conduct these assessments, she said.
More information
Read more on citizen-led approaches to the collection of information about schooling and children’s learning, available in The Annual Status of Education Report survey: Monitoring learning levels of children in rural India, published by ACER’s Centre for Education Policy and Practice and Centre for Global Education Monitoring at www.acer.edu.au/files/AssessGEMs_ ASER.pdf For more information on ACER’s work on best practice in the collection of data for monitoring of educational outcomes worldwide, visit the Centre for Global Education Monitoring at www.acer.edu.au/gem