Central Data Catalog

CONFEMEN member countries Programme d'Analyse des Systèmes Educatifs de la CONFEMEN

International student assessment 1991-2010 - National Assessment (version 1):

PASEC's former methodology (1991 - 2010) is based on the administration of two tests in the same academic year. The pre-test is held at the beginning of school year, and the post-test one month before the end of school year which allows for the estimation of value-added models. The tests were administered collectively and delivered through paper-pencil tests.

The PASEC assesses students in Mathematics and in Reading and Writing in the country's official language(s) of instruction.

Test items consist of multiple choice questions and open-ended questions requiring short constructed responses. The score obtained by a pupil on a particular test is considered as an indicator of his level of performance on this test. If the answer given by the student to an item is correct, it is assigned the value (1) and if it is incorrect or missing the value zero (0). The total score is therefore the value obtained by adding the values attributed to the answers to the test's items. In other words, it represents the number or percentage of correct answers from the student's test.

However, these tests neither allowed to describe students' skills nor to rank student on a proficiency scale. The items composing the test respond primarily to the need of generating variance in students' achievement in order to allow the analysis stage to identify factors at the student and school level, involved in the progression in academic achievement during one school year.

2011-2012 - National Assessment (version 2):

Competency scales and Item Response Theory were introduced to the “added value” model in Mali, Cambodia, Lao People's Democratic Republic and Vietnam. Student performance is reported by post-ante proficiency levels, created by the PASEC team in collaboration with national teams. Proficiency levels are country-specific and vary by subject and by grade.

The rotated booklets method was chosen by PASEC. Used by the most recognized international programmes of student assessments, the method divides a test into several parts (called blocks of items) in order to administer a subset of the test (in a booklet) to a portion of the sample. The use of Item Response Theory (IRT), allows to report pupils' performances on different tests on a single scale, with the use of anchoring items. This method ensures students are subjected to a different subset of items, or in other words, each student is tested only on some blocks concentrated in a booklet. In order to reconstitute the average degree of students' mastery on all PASEC items, the items are cautiously randomly distributed within the blocks and the blocks randomly distributed among students via several booklets, as well as blocks of anchor items. This method also allows neutralizing the effects related to the learning processes and fatigue. Consequently, if students have not answered all the test items, blocks of anchor items are used to connect all the booklets but also to place all the test items on a same scale and therefore to predict student scores on the items they have not been presented with.

The structure of content and cognitive domains may vary across countries, since the standard test has been nationally adapted. For example in Vietnam (2012), the content domains for grade 2 and 5 in Mathematics are the same: Operation and Numeration, Measurement and Geometry, and the cognitive domains are Knowledge and understanding, Applying and solving a problem. In Mali (2011), the content domains for Language of instruction are Written comprehension and Oral comprehension in both grades, in addition to Essay writing for grade 5.

PASEC international assessment, from 2013 onwards:

In this new setting, PASEC assesses students in Mathematics and in Reading in the country's official language(s) of instruction.

The first international cycle of the PASEC assessment was effectively implemented in 2014 in ten countries: Benin, Burkina-Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Congo, Ivory Coast, Niger, Senegal and Togo. The instruments used in the survey (questionnaires and tests) are no longer administered at the beginning and at end of the year, but only at the end of the year of the two grades assessed. Analytical methods include: item response theory for scaling tests and questionnaires, the use of replicate weights to estimate standard errors and the use of hierarchical modelling for linking tests scores to contextual data. The changes in this new setting aim at aligning PASEC practices to assessment techniques used by other international assessment programmes such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) or the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA).

Benin - Burkina Faso - Burundi - Cambodia - Cameroon - Central African Republic - Comoros - Congo - Côte d'Ivoire - Democratic Republic of the Congo - Djibouti - Gabon - Guinea - Lao's People Democratic Republic - Lebanon - Madagascar - Mali - Mauritania - Mauritius - Niger - Senegal - Chad - Togo - Viet Nam

1991-2012:

Students enrolled in grade 2 and grade 5 (ISCED 1) in participating countries.

Exclusions:

- Students enrolled in non-authorised private schools, religious or traditional schools

- Students following curricula that are not under the responsibility of the public institution in charge of national curricula development or of the national education system

- Schools created at the beginning of the school year or located in conflict areas (e.g Casamance in Senegal and Tibesti in Tchad) are not included in the sampling frame

From 2013 onwards:

Students enrolled in grade 2 and grade 6 (ISCED 1) in participating countries.

Name	Abbreviation	Affiliation	Role
Conférence des Ministres de l’Éducation des États et Gouvernements de la Francophonie	CONFEMEN		Data collection
UNESCO Institute for Statistics	UIS	United Nations	Questionnaire design, metadata collection, review and publication

PASEC