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| [PHOTO: Ian Armstrong/Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0] |
Washington/Lima: Some 5.7 million students will benefit from quality public
education and more transparent school-principal selection processes in 40,000
Peruvian schools. These are just some of the results expected from a US$25
million loan to Peru’s Ministry of Education (MINEDU) approved recently by the
World Bank Board of Directors.
Peru has made great strides in terms of educational
coverage; however, in quality terms, it still has a way to go. The performance
of Peruvian students in both national and international assessments is well
below expectations. In the last PISA evaluation of 2009, organized by the OECD
and undertaken on a nation-wide sample of 15-year old students, Peru ranked
among the last in math, reading comprehension and science among 65 countries
participating worldwide, and also exhibited wider socio-economic gaps.
In order to improve the results of public education, the
Government has drawn up the Strategic Learning Achievements Program (PELA, in
Spanish), focusing on Budgeting-for-Results. This program will establish a
robust evaluation system to strengthen and monitor a set of reforms aimed at
improving educational quality and learning. National evaluations are an
effective tool to improve learning results because they help to showcase the
actual progress made by students; that, in turn, helps in the design of better
policies and in measuring the impact of programs implemented. It also serves to
pinpoint the location of those students and schools that need more support and
to allocate resources more efficiently in order to close existing gaps.
Moreover, teachers, principals and parents can use the results information to
design strategies and follow-up on improvements.
“The Bank brings its vast international experience to assist
MINEDU improve its educational quality evaluation systems,” said Susan
Goldmark, World Bank Regional Director for Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru and
Venezuela.
The project includes three components:
· Evaluation of student learning, including increasing the
number of school grades participating in the Student Evaluation Survey (now
only applied in second grade); introduce internationally-validated
methodologies to measure early childhood development and the quality of
preschool services; and support MINEDU to continue Peru’s participation in
international evaluations, allowing it to compare its results with those of
other countries.
· Evaluation of pedagogical practices, which includes
supporting MINEDU in following up and evaluating in-classroom teacher
practices, as well as implementing a competitive selection and training system
for school principals.
· Strengthen MINEDU’s administrative and fiduciary practices
in order to improve program capacities, including the undertaking of
independent evaluations, both technical, financial and acquisitions.
The technical assistance provided to Peru by the World Bank
in recent years includes Government support to disseminate results of the
second-grade Student Evaluation Survey, international internships and workshops
with experts to learn from relevant experiences in other places, and recently a
new operation to strengthen higher education accreditation and quality
assurance systems.
The US$25 million variable spread loan includes a 7-year
maturity period and a 4.5-year grace period.