As part of the Optimizing Evaluation for All (OAA) initiative, the Brookings Institution, in collaboration with the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and the Educators Network for the Transformation of Teaching and Learning (TALENT) whose Secretariat is based at UNESCO's Regional Office in Dakar, is facilitating a mini-survey with nine African countries to identify existing evaluation tools related to 21st century competencies. During the mini-survey, countries will participate in a data collection activity to identify and provide examples of national and classroom tests or test items that could be interpreted as directly or indirectly capturing 21st century skills.

 

This information will be reported at the TALENT regional meetings and will act, in part, to provide an understanding of the "basic" approaches to assessing these skills.

On 16 and 17 July 2018, nine African countries participated in the first workshop of the FAO Mini-Study, during which country representatives provided information on their national education systems, engaged in collaborative discussions on 21st century skills and discussed and finalized the guidelines for the mini-study. During August and September, representatives of their respective countries began contacting their ministries and departments to obtain evaluation samples at the national level, to identify and recruit schools to sample and collect samples of national and classroom tools and items.

 

This second OAA mini-study workshop is designed to familiarize participants with the key characteristics of 21st century competencies that will enable them to recognize and categorize assessment elements and tools in an appropriate manner. Therefore, country representatives should come to the workshop with examples of tools and items that could be interpreted as 21st century skills. During the workshop, representatives will engage in a collaborative analysis of these tool samples, and common agreements will be established across the country. This is essential if the coding of each country's sample evaluations is to be based on similar criteria. The objective of the workshop is to empower participants to code their own data and to better understand the competencies being studied.