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These seven action-oriented “dimensions” are critical to the delivery of student learning and
highlights the processes the school goes through as it transforms itself into a learning
organisation.
Measuring Education Quality
Education quality is a slippery concept and is interpreted in different ways. Measuring education
quality is complicated by the fact that (a) the outcomes of education is multidimensional, (b)
countries vary in terms of length of compulsory education , (c) quality is observed only for
enrolled students and (d) the participation rate across the compulsory and post-compulsory
education levels vary greatly across countries. An effective education system teaches civic and
moral values, builds basic literacy and numeracy skills as well as higher order cognitive skills.
One can also evaluate quality from two perspectives: (i) fundamental quality; (ii) excellence
(World Bank 2008). The former refers to proportion of students who have attained the basic
competencies to complete the schooling cycle and participate in the labor market. The latter
relates to the proportion of students who belong to the global top 10% of learners or have
entered into “world-class” research universities. Fundamental quality also requires a shift from
memorization and rote learning to greater focus on communication, analytical and critical
thinking skills. In this report, the analysis focuses on two measures of fundamental quality: (a)
literacy rates in the adult population and (b) international test scores for math, reading and
science.
In the context of SDGs, ‘quality education’ is best reflected in terms of fundamental quality --
how much children learn in school. However, there is no global metric to measure education
quality defined in terms of student learning. Compared to data on other aspect of children’s
development (e.g. malnutrition), measuring learning outcome is much more challenging. There
are many domains as well as levels of learning. Education systems around the world also have
different curriculum standards and often have unique set of basic competencies that students
are required to master. In contrast to health outcomes data on which is routinely gathered by
national governments following standard measurement standards and made available through
international bodies such as WHO, the production of statistics on education quality is not well-
coordinated. Countries vary in terms of national assessments as well participation in
international exercise that evaluates student performance. Data on input quality also varies
across OIC countries.
The SDGs focus on lifelong learning and early childhood development raises another
measurement issue. There is an emerging consensus on the importance of early childhood
development (ECD) and non- cognitive (i.e. soft) skills in acquiring cognitive skills as well as
equalizing opportunities in learning in school age. However, comparable data on soft skills is
unavailable. Equally there is no international assessment of pre-school education quality.
While PISA assesses “representative” samples of students in secondary schools in three different
subjects, mathematics, science and reading, they do not capture early life learning. This is also
true for PIRLS and TIMSS grade 4 which cover math, science and reading proficiency in later
part of the primary schooling cycle. Moreover, participation of OIC countries in these two
assessment exercise is limited. A globally recognized assessment of early grade numeracy and
literacy skills is EGRA and EGMA. 6 The United States Agency for International Development
(USAID) ran a project entitled “Education Data for Decision Making (EdData II)” between 2004
6 For details on EGRA assessment, see Dubeck and Gove (2015).