Discussant: Ian Attfield (DFID) Assessing learning through international, high-stake, and progressive testing serves many different purposes. Tests, such as PISA, are used to indicate to the international community and... [ view full abstract ]
Discussant: Ian Attfield (DFID)
Assessing learning through international, high-stake, and progressive testing serves many different purposes. Tests, such as PISA, are used to indicate to the international community and national policymakers the quality of teaching and learning in the education system. Progressive tests given each academic year are used by teachers and students to understand change in grade-level learning outcomes and competencies. Assessments, then, are used not only for academic and learning purposes, but they serve political purposes for different actors in the education systems. This symposium brings together two papers from different disciplinary perspectives and analyses to examine what assessments of learning reveal about student learning and quality of schooling in Viet Nam. Based on research conducted through the RISE – Research for Improving Educational Systems, and Young Lives in Vietnam, the two papers examine and problematize the quality of student learning and the use of learning assessments for political accountability in Viet Nam.
The first paper uses Young Lives school surveys that have followed approximately 1,000 pupils in a cohort born in 2001 from primary Grade 5 through to Grade 10 in upper secondary, collecting assessment data in mathematics, Vietnamese reading and functional English. This unique longitudinal data is employed to examine the learning trajectories of pupils across a diverse range of backgrounds, including ethnic minority pupils and those living in isolated areas. While the Vietnamese education system is successful in delivering basic skills and does so relatively equitably, significant inequalities nonetheless emerge by upper secondary level. Using school, class and teacher characteristics from Grade 5 and estimates of school effectiveness from Grades 5 and 10, we identify the extent to which home background disadvantage is compounded by measured school quality with respect to shaping children's learning trajectories and future life chances.
The second paper examines how Vietnamese policymakers use assessments to be accountable to different actors’ demands for improving quality of learning. The international development community gives considerable attention to high performing countries in efforts to determine factors in the system that produce these results. These tests are also used politically to illustrate to national actors, particularly parents and teachers, the achievements of government policies and support. But in Viet Nam, these tests and the quality of learning are highly disputed: parents, teachers and even policymakers are critical of the tests and less satisfied with the results as they do not illustrate some skills and competencies valued for future life and work. Drawing on extensive interview data with 30 national policymakers, this paper argues that most Vietnamese policymakers do not value PISA as an assessment of quality learning, but they value it to be “accountable” to the international community and to placate the national constituencies that are heavily contested over the quality of learning in schools.
Ian Attfield will serve as a discussant for the papers and in regard to educational learning outcomes in Viet Nam more broadly.
