Strengthening Holistic Learning Measurement Systems in Colombia and Peru

The ability to deliver high-quality education services at scale in crisis contexts is, in part, predicated on the capacity of education systems to collect, analyze, and use high-quality data about children’s holistic learning outcomes and education quality. Yet the global architecture for strengthening holistic outcome measurement systems is weak and fragmented.

Existing global initiatives focus on mapping existing initiatives or on adapting measurement tools, while national initiatives focus too often on assessment tools themselves with less regard for their purpose, use, and alignment within education systems. Moreover, such tools and methods are often not appropriate for use with the most marginalized groups (e.g., displaced populations; Black, Indigenous, and ethnic minority populations, gender groups, children with disabilities), further entrenching inequities in who has access to quality education and who does not.

In this project, we aimed to ensure that practitioners, policymakers, and researchers in Colombia and Peru:

1. Strengthened capacity to develop and adapt, implement and use data from high-quality measures of holistic learning outcomes – including social and emotional skills as well as the contextual factors that support such skills – for both host-country and Venezuelan refugee children and families.

2. Embedded measures and processes within education systems that enable the effective, sustainable, and equitable collection and use of fit-for-purpose data on holistic learning outcomes.

3. Strengthened alignment of assessments and data on holistic learning outcomes with other elements of their national education ecosystem (e.g., frameworks, curricular, resources) and across stakeholders.

At the regional and global levels, we aimed to increase understanding of approaches to strengthening holistic outcome measurement systems in conflict and protracted crisis settings.

To achieve these ambitious goals in a way that was tailored to in-country needs while allowing for the distillation of cross-context learnings, we worked on:

A Framework for Holistic Learning Outcome Measurement Systems Coherence

We integrated two well-known educational frameworks for systems analyses of academic learning outcomes: the Research on Systems of Education and the World Bank’s SABER frameworks. Our framework extends existing frameworks by focusing not just on academic learning, but also on social and emotional learning; it also includes a specific focus on equity and inclusion of marginalized populations.

A Toolkit of Open-Source Resources to Assess Systems’ Coherence for Holistic Learning Outcome Measurement

We developed in Spanish and in English adaptive quantitative survey and qualitative interview protocols using open-source software to collect data from policymakers, researchers, NGOs, and teachers on their perceptions of and use of holistic learning outcome measurement systems in Colombia and Peru. We also developed training materials that support the collection, analysis and use of the data.

Strategies to Strengthen the Coherence of Systems for Holistic Learning Outcome Measurement

In collaboration with our Steering Committees in Colombia and Peru, used the results of our mixed-methods diagnostic to inform the design of strategies to strengthen the design, collection, analysis and use of holistic learning data with a focus on equity and inclusion. These strategies supported the alignment of information with teacher professional development supports and curricula, while also supporting relationships across diverse stakeholders in the national education system.