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Assessment of primary education
What 12-year-old students learn

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Introduction

One of the tasks assigned to the National Institute for Quality and Evaluation is that of carrying out general assessment of the education system, developing assessment systems and producing information to help improve the quality of education. The responsibility for this task, channelled through the Institute, is shared by the Ministry of Education and Culture and the education departments of those Autonomous Regions with full responsibility for education.

The Institute's action plan for the period 1994-1997 includes a number of studies, including the "Assessment of Primary Education".

The basic objectives of this study are as follows:

  1. To evaluate the effects of the introduction of the new Primary Education, both as regards the functioning of schools and as regards the educational processes carried out and their results.
  2. To ascertain and assess the educational results achieved by the end of the primary stage and the way in which these relate to educational processes and to the different contextual factors which influence such achievement.

The main objective pursued in gathering data on the academic results of students taking the Sixth Year of Basic General Education in 1995 (students aged 12) is to ascertain the level of academic achievement attained by these students with a view to laying down a baseline for use in analyzing educational progress in the school system over time as a means to evaluate the effectiveness of the reforms introduced in the system.

In a few years' time, similar tests should logically be run on students having completed the new Primary Education in full, in order to assess the changes which have taken place in academic achievement as a result of this new stage in the functioning of the school system. Again, the same kind of data as in this first survey should be gathered by means of questionnaires to be completed by teachers, school management staff and students' families, in order to analyze the changes that have taken place in teaching methods, functioning of schools and attitudes, and expectations of the participants in the educational process following the general introduction of the new Primary Education.

The final report on the survey, due to be published in early 1997, will include, in a suitably structured form, the results of the tests administered to students and the questionnaires completed by teachers, management staff and families, all based upon a representative sample taken from schools located throughout the country. The survey methodology, which follows international research models for educational assessment, is summarised in the final pages of this publication.

The sections following this introduction provide a brief preview of some of the survey data relating to academic achievement and will hopefully enlist the reader's interest in the final report proper. To this end, and in order to provide direct, graphic information which it is hoped may also provoke some debate, the general results of the academic achievement tests in the four areas studied --Spanish Language and Literature, Mathematics, Social Sciences and Natural Sciences-- have also been included. The figures offered are the overall percentages of correct answers in each area and the percentages of correct answers in the various sub-areas which are covered in each one.

In addition, the results of some of the actual questions put to students are given to illustrate the degree of difficulty of the questions that students were asked to answer in each of the areas and sub-areas into which the test was divided.


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