The Ministry of National Education released on Thursday the results of the Learning test of 6th grade of primary school of 2022, which -in Mathematics and Language- for the first time was done in sample form instead of census and that, by exceptionality, was added to the evaluation calendar.
The results showed a very large improvement compared to 2021 and a recovery of learning to similar levels of 2018 (last primary test before the pandemic).
In 2022 the census test was that of the secondary school, but the Government passed the dissemination of the results – which is usually done when the school year starts – for the second semester of the year.
For the experts consulted by Clarín, such a great improvement is striking (although it can be explained because in 2022 the students did the whole year in face-to-face and in 2021 they came from almost two years of remote education, they say), while asking to know how the sample was built.
The results
If anyone had doubts regarding the importance of school presence, the results of Learning 2022 of primary school clear them completely. There is a substantial improvement in Language and Mathematics (the two areas taken) and more forceful in Language, where there had been more regression.
The Learning 2022 results showed a significant improvement over 2021.
Those who proportionally improved the most compared to 2021 are students from low-income families, who were also the ones who had regressed the most with the interruption of school attendance. In Language, in 2021 seven out of ten (71.1%) had not reached the satisfactory level, while in 2022 they were 37.2%. That is, the improvement was 33.9 percentage points.
At a general level, and as a "rebound" after the prolonged closure of schools, Argentine students who went to 6th grade in 2022 – that is, who resumed the classrooms for an entire year after the two closures – performed almost similarly to how did the boys who went to 6th grade in 2018. before the pandemic.
While the apprentices have recovered, challenges remain. For example, 42.3% of the boys still do not reach the satisfactory level in Mathematics and 25.6% in Language. By 2021, with schools closed, those percentages had risen to 45.2% and 44% respectively.
"Last year, in February or March, Argentina was discussing how to recover all the children who had left school, how to ensure full attendance, how to recover the learning that we had shown that, especially the poorest, had regressed a lot. As that was the discussion we took this test at the end of the year that shows a very large repair of the damage fundamentally in Lengua, but in both areas," Education Minister Jaime Perczyk said at a press conference.
Minister of National Education, Jaime Perczyk. Guillermo Rodriguez Adami
And he sent "an enormous recognition to the teachers, principals, supervisors, for the effort they have made to rebuild that virtuous routine that has for the Argentine family to go to school every day and learn. And to the teachers for doing the job we do, which is teaching."
The measurement method
The official calendar of educational evaluations, agreed in the Federal Council of Education (CFE), establishes that the national tests of Mathematics and Language (the most important) are census and biannual. That is, they are made to all students one year in primary and the next in secondary and so on, they alternate. Always to those of the last year of each level. In the case of primary, sixth grade.
Before the pandemic, in 2018 it was the turn of primary school and in 2019 of secondary school. In 2020 it was suspended due to school closures. In 2021 it was resumed in primary and in 2022 in secondary.
But in 2022 the Ministry of Education added, through a resolution of the CFE, a sample test (representative of the whole country) for primary, which are the results presented this Thursday.
This sample test, the Government reported, was taken from 123,855 students from 3,686 schools. They are 16% of the students and 16% of the schools in the country. From the Government they point out that it is more representative than international samples such as ERCE (Unesco) or PISA, which measure 233 and 469 Argentine schools respectively.
As the results of the 2022 high school census test have not yet been disseminated, it is not yet known how the closure of schools due to the pandemic affected Argentine middle school students.
A marked improvement
"It is striking that there are improvements in such pronounced scores. A rise (or decrease) of 50 points as it is taking place is something very rare," María Cortelezzi, a specialist in educational evaluation, told Clarín, who pointed out that it would be necessary to analyze how the sample was made.
"The improvements especially occur in those who were lower, which makes a lot of sense. But it is equally striking that it is of so many points in Language. Only as an approximation, although it is not accurate, in PISA 30 points are equivalent to one year of schooling, "added the specialist.
"When there are these jumps, it is necessary to review to clear up doubts. When something like this happened in Spain in PISA results it was done and nothing was found. But hey, the review was done," Cortelezzi explained.
For Alejandro Ganimian, an expert in educational evaluations at New York University, the sample should also be reviewed, but he emphasizes how it was made in each of the jurisdictions. It explains that, if any of them are not representative, it may have some level of impact on the reliability of the results at the national level.
In any case, he affirms that it does not seem "unreasonable" that students who spent almost two years in the pandemic have much worse results than those who resumed face-to-face attendance. "We went back to how we were before," he says.
"It's two very different study groups that are compared. Those of 2021 without classes and those of 2022 who had 4th and 5th grade without classes, but 6th with classes. The rebound, especially those of low socioeconomic status, is consistent and reasonable," he says.
Ganimian also explains that, if done well, sample and census tests can be compared. The only thing that changes is the level of accuracy of the results. With censuses they are much more accurate, but it does not change a trend.
Regarding the reasons for the improvement compared to 2021, Minister Perczyk said that it was due to the return to face-to-face ("we have an educational system that is face-to-face and we recover it," he said) and added that it could also impact the measures of having added one more hour of classes to 81% of students in 85% of schools, the delivery of books and teacher training in Mathematics and Language.
Ganimian explains that standardized assessments are not designed to identify whether a public policy had an impact. "You have to be careful with those kinds of interpretations. Before an educational policy, here the reopening of classes was the most relevant change between 2021 and 2022, "he says.
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