In June, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MoEYS) started their participation in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a significant step towards understanding student learning outcomes, taking stock of what learners know, gauging the readiness of Cambodia’s youth for the future and orienting post-COVID-19 recovery efforts. The results are expected to be ready in early 2023.
Launched by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the PISA tests the ability of 15-year-old students to use their skills in and knowledge of reading, mathematics, and science to overcome real-life challenges. The results are then published by the OECD for all participation countries. Since its inception in 2000, the PISA has become a global standard in assessing school performance and progress, and has played an important role in shifting policy focus from education inputs to learning outcomes in government decision and policy making.
This is the first time Cambodia has participated in the programme. The initiative is led and partially funded by MoEYS with additional financial contribution from the multi-country Capacity Development Partnership Fund (CDPF), which consists of the European Union (EU), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Swedish Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
Cambodia is very pleased to be part of this global assessment framework, said H.E. Hang Chuon Naron, Minister of Education, Youth and Sports.
“We look forward to better understanding the learning levels of our students as it is critically important to ensure our interventions are correctly targeted. MoEYS is investing heavily in early grade learning, teacher upskilling and digital education, which will help us overcome the learning challenges caused by the COVID-related school closures,” he said.
“Quality data and research are critical for good policy-making. We can really tackle problems when we can define them clearly. Data – and especially research that is comparable across borders – help us understanding the issues better. To ensure public money is spent efficiently, we shall assess if the interventions and policies in place reach the results we expected. Again, data and evidence give us the power and help us decide if the proposed solution go to the right direction, so we spend money for results. The EU is proudly partnering with Cambodia in evidence-based policy-making,” said H.E. Ms. Carmen Moreno, European Union Ambassador in Cambodia.
“I’ve had the pleasure of following the steady progress of Cambodia’s education system reforms since 2013,” said Ms. Rebecca Black, USAID’s Acting Mission Director in Cambodia.
Ms. Rebecca Black said the PISA ideally complements the Early Grade Reading Assessments, which USAID has been carrying-out with Cambodia experts to monitor student learning in the primary grades. “We are proud to be a partner on this important initiative to collect and use data transparently in the education sector,” she underlined.
Source: Agency Kampuchea Press
