The application of the evidence Pisa (Program for International Student Assessment) has been a topic of conversation after the announcement by the Ministry of Education of Panama (Meduca) that it will not participate in the 2025 ones.
Given this position, the doubt arises about what is the role of these evidence and how they contribute to education dominicansince they have been implemented in the country since 2015.
The evaluations Pisa are evidence diagnostics developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which allow determining the conditions of the system educational of a country and its ability to prepare its students in science.
The evidence They are applied every three years, and in the country they are carried out by the Institute for Evaluation and Research of Educational Quality (IDEICE). It is applied to a sample population of high school students between 15 and 16 years of age.
Ancell Scheker, Deputy Minister of Technical and Pedagogical Affairs of the Ministry of Education (minerd), defined them as a document that reveals information about the context educational and allows the authorities analyze and size the situation in order to take measures to optimize results.
He said that for these evaluations The State invests 48,000 euros every three years and they are part of the measures of the Covenant National for the Educational Reform of the DR (2014-2030).
“This information is important to take measures for the improvement of the system. The results of Pisa have served to review the curriculum, teacher training, leadership and, currently, to develop a program to strengthen skills at the secondary level,” he explained.
He pointed out that, although there are other evaluations national and regional that allow measuring the development of educationthey are different and complete each other.
In turn, Darwin Caraballo, executive director of Business Action for Education (Educa), indicated that the evaluations Pisa integrate the ecosystem of evaluations of the country that allows validating the “health status” of the education of the country.
“The test Pisa will never generate one improvement in the quality of the educationbut what will allow everyone system and to public opinion, to families, is to know what the state is and what degree of success or lack of success the public policies that are being made to improve the means of learning“he explained.
Furthermore, he recommended not to stop doing these evaluationscontrary to Panama’s decision, since this will allow us to have the complete panorama of the system and based on that, decide the policies and measures that allow it to be improved.
“The Dominican Republic must continue on that path, although the news is not always the most encouraging, but the last measurement even brought a feeling that one is on the right path, we must continue measuring the state of health of the system educational Dominican, Caraballo pointed out.
Héctor Molina, president of the Association of Private Educational Institutions (AINEP), expressed that he advocates for the continuity of these evidence and all those that contribute to determining the quality of learning.
“Eliminate the evidence PISA is like turning a blind eye, it is like turning our back on the situation if it is going badly for us. I advocate for more measurements, both internal that the ministry does, and even more internal that each center does. educational“, he expressed.
In 2022, the Dominican Republic was one of the few countries that showed improvements in your performance in science and reading comprehension after the educational crisis of the Covid-19 pandemic. The country had shown unfavorable results in the first two evaluations carried out in 2015 and 2018, respectively.
