A total of 594,000 fifth and sixth year high school students are evaluated this Wednesday in 12,067 schools across the countryin the Learn standardized test that aims to test their knowledge in Language and Mathematics and for the first time also “the factors associated with these performances” to think about public policies, informed the Secretary of Training and Educational Evaluation, Germán Lodola.
“The objective of the test is to analyze the performance, but in the light of the learning and teaching contexts to make public policy decisions that consider these factors”specified the official from the Ministry of Education in dialogue with Télam.
The evaluation, of a census nature, will have complementary questionnaires for both students and school principals.
In regards to the language contentthe reading comprehension of various types of literary and non-literary texts will be evaluated and the ability to extract, interpret, reflect and evaluate will be investigated.
In Mathematicsthe general cognitive ability to solve problems will be considered, based on multiple-choice items, such as recognition of concepts and properties, resolution of situations in intra-mathematical or reality contexts, and communication on the subject.
Along with the questions about the school curriculum, this time complementary questionnaires were incorporated into the test that seek to contextualize the factors associated with performance.
“Fundamentally, we look at five factors that are social origin, parental education, having books at home, access to technological or computer resources and material, and early schooling (when did the children start studying)” Lodola explained.
Today the Learn test is carried out in all secondary schools in the country. This evaluation will allow us to know how and in what context secondary school students study.
For more information about the operation, go to https://t.co/jhOMknRBky pic.twitter.com/g45X8CaktR
— Ministry of Education of the Argentine Nation (@EducacionAR) October 19, 2022
Given the results of previous evaluations, the Ministry of Education of the Nation designed different public policies, among which are the distribution of “books to learn” that seeks to increase the possession of texts in homes, the increase in scholarships for educational completion for adolescents aged 16 and 17, and the recovery of the Connect Equality program for the distribution of computers.
Also“the management of Minister Jaime Perczyk resolved to distribute more than 8 million Language and Mathematics books in primary schools and add one more hour of class per day”highlighted the secretary of Training and Educational Evaluation.
A total of 25,325 teachers will be affected by the evaluation and there will be 1,000 coordinators and 12,067 directors or supervisors.
In turn, with the aim of providing a “more complete approach”, the Ministry of Education is designing formative evaluations that are planned to be implemented next year.
“It is an evaluation of the learning that is taking place. For example, if a teacher teaches something to the kids, the following week she evaluates what she taught them. It is not a test but an interaction between the teacher and the kids. We are developing a computer platform that we have already launched so that all teachers in the country can use the same platform to do this type of evaluation,” Lodola reported.
The results of the Learn tests will be published from June 2023 in a series of reports. In the first place, the National Report and the jurisdictional reports on the Learning Achievements and their associated factors will be disseminated.
Then, national thematic reports on Comprehensive Sexual Education (ESI), Bilingual and Rural Intercultural Education, School Climate, and student trajectories will be made available.
The reports will present methodological recommendations to provide more information regarding the response construction processes developed by the students.
There will also be two reports for the directors of each participating school that will include data from Learning, the Annual Survey and methodological recommendations.
