PROFILES OF EDUCATIONAL ASSESSMENT SYSTEMS WORLDWIDE

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Corresponding author. School of Education, Universidad de San Andre´s, Vito Dumas 284, B1644BID, Victoria, Pcia. de Buenos Aires, Argentina. Email: sgvirtz@udesa.edu.ar The Argentine Republic is a federal country composed of 23 provinces and an autonomous jurisdiction, the City of Buenos Aires, where national authorities are based. Once the responsibility and maintenance of education was transferred from the nation state to the provinces, and after leaving aside its former character of main and direct agent of education which it had been holding for nearly 100 years, the National Ministry of Education of Argentinea was known as ‘a Ministry without schools’. Public Law No. 24,195. Date of enactment: 14 April 1993. Date of publication in the Official Bulletin: 5 May 1993. It is specifically by decree of the Executive Power that ‘the main responsibility of the National Department of Evaluation is set to supervise and coordinate those actions regarding the development and implementation of the system of evaluation of education quality’. And one of its tasks is to ‘establish an evaluation system measuring the education quality of the National Education System in every jurisdiction, cycles, levels and systems’ (Narodowski et al., 2002 Montoya S Perusia JC Vera Mohorade A 2003 Evaluacio´n de la calidad educativa: de los sistemas centrales al aula. Estudio del impacto de las poli´ticas de devolucio´n de informacio´n personalizada a las escuelas en tres provincias de Argentina [Evaluation of educational quality: from the central systems to the classroom. A study on the impact of policies for personalized information devolution to schools in three Argentine provinces] (Buenos Aires, Centro de Investigacio´n para la Equidad y Calidad Educativa (CIECE))., Preliminary Report, mimeo [Google Scholar], p. 21). These instruments, also called ‘supplementary’ as regards the knowledge tests, were aimed at gathering ‘information which could help explain results’ of the measurement arising out of the tests (MCyE, 1994, p.7). More precisely, it was a set of self‐administered structured questionnaires for students, teachers and directors of institutions where tests were applied. In addition, though only in 1993, questionnaires were also distributed among families of those students in the last year of primary school who have taken the tests that year. In spite of the fact that such questionnaires were applied as from the first action (with more regularity in the primary level than in the middle one), results of those factors related to performance were known to the public for the first time in 1999, by means of a specific study (Oelsner, 2002 National Ministry of Culture and Education 1997 El sistema nacional de evaluacio´n de la calidad en Argentina [The national system for the evaluation of the quality of education in Argentina] (Buenos Aires, OEI), Official Websites of the National Ministry of Culture and Education Argentina, Ministry of Education, Science and Technology addinfo>http://www.me.gov.ar/ [Google Scholar]). Argentina, MCyE, El Sistema Nacional de Evaluacio´n de la Calidad en Argentina [The National System of Evaluation of the Quality of Education in Argentina], OEI, 1997, p. 7. It should be noted that special education in primary school, adults' education and artistic modality in secondary education were set aside from the National Evaluation Actions. Those institutions with less than 5 students were not included as well and, as from 1997, that number increased to 10 students. There have been also certain provinces which have not taken part in all the annual evaluation actions (Llach et al., 1999 Llach J Montoya S Rolda´n F 1999 Educacio´n para todos [Education for all], (Co´rdoba, IERAL) [Google Scholar]; Narodowski et al., 2002 Montoya S Perusia JC Vera Mohorade A 2003 Evaluacio´n de la calidad educativa: de los sistemas centrales al aula. Estudio del impacto de las poli´ticas de devolucio´n de informacio´n personalizada a las escuelas en tres provincias de Argentina [Evaluation of educational quality: from the central systems to the classroom. A study on the impact of policies for personalized information devolution to schools in three Argentine provinces] (Buenos Aires, Centro de Investigacio´n para la Equidad y Calidad Educativa (CIECE))., Preliminary Report, mimeo [Google Scholar]; Larripa, 2003 Larripa S 2003 El sistema nacional de evaluacio´n de la calidad educative (SINEC) : acerca de la comparabilidad de sus resultados. Argentina, 1995–2000) [The national system for the evaluation of education quality: on the comparability of its results. Argentina, 1995–2000] Universidad de San Andre´s, thesis of Master’s degree, mimeo. [Google Scholar]).