OAA : Nine african countries engaged in the debate around 21st century skills

Dakar hosted the second workshop of the mini-study of the Optimizing Assessment for All (OAA) initiative, providing nine African countries with the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the main attributes of 21st century skills and to recognize and categorize assessment items and tools in an appropriate way.

The Teaching and Learning: Educator’s Network for Transformation (TALENT) organized this workshop on November 8 and 9 in partnership with the Brookings Institution, in collaboration with the Global Partnership for Education (GPE).

The objective of the OAA is to help countries improve the assessment, teaching, and learning of the 21st century skills. The two-day event was designed for countries to present the structure of their education system and engage in an in-depth debate around a sample of the assessment tools collected, as well as to develop tools coding processes and to start off the coding exercise.

During the presentations of many French-speaking African countries such as Chad, Côte d'Ivoire and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), it was noted that all countries have the same traditional assessment systems. These include formative evaluations (tasks in class or homework, tests, quarterly, six-monthly exams, etc.) and national certification evaluations.

The recognition of the value of 21st century skills in school curricula remains an issue for many African countries. In DR Congo, for example, some actors recognize the value of 21st century skills but their assessment is problematic because these transversal competencies transcend the disciplines taught.

For English-speaking countries such as Zambia, the vision of education may be different compared to other French-speaking countries. In this southern African country, the objectives of their curriculum allow learners to acquire a set of values that encourage them to, among other things: strive for personal excellence; establish positive relationships with others; celebrate their faith and respect the diversity of beliefs of others.

Esther Care, senior researcher at the Brookings Institution, elaborated on the need to take into account new categories of transversal competencies in the curriculum and learning assessments, citing the example of some countries in the Asia-Pacific region, where similar analytical work coordinated by NEQMAP of UNESCO Bangkok has already taken place. This evolution stems from the need for the school to embrace issues related to education in the 21st century, and which influence it: culture, employment, in particular through the circulation of values, information, ideas and people associated with them, and which implicitly assigns other functions to the school.

Following this meeting on 26 November, three national delegations representing Gambia, DRC and Zambia participated in the launch event of the second phase of the OAA initiative. This phase involves intensive work at the country level over a period of 15 months to design, develop, administer and test classroom assessments of 21st century skills. The practical approach of this work will be based on the research activities carried out in the mini-study with the nine African countries. During this phase, the three countries concerned will participate in workshops and regional meetings to exchange thoughts and knowledge as part of a collaborative learning approach, build on existing skills and assets and share progress and lessons learned with countries in the region.