from Poland

BOX 4.11

International assessment and educational reform: An example from Poland

Poland has made marked improvements in its student performance over the last decade. According to the organisation for economic Co-operation and Development (oeCD) Program for international Student Assessment (PiSA) results, Poland exceeded the oeCD average and is now close to top-performing countries. This progress is the result of a series of Polish educational system reforms introduced in 1999. The most important change of the 1999 reforms was extension of comprehensive education by one year. A public examination system and expansion of preschool were other key aspects of the reforms.

Although policy makers did not pay close attention to the evaluation of these reforms, they undertook participation in PiSA in 2000. Polish students were tested in 2000, 2009, and 2012, which coincided with the series of reforms that began in 1999. Taking part in successive rounds of PiSA allowed policy makers to evaluate the effects of the various reforms. Consequently, PiSA has served as a tool for evaluating the reforms of 1999.

Source: Jakubowski 2015.

The government understands that mobilizing families and households is an important part of any effort to improve learning outcomes. To this end, the country has established a program of school-based management, the enhanced Program for School improvement (ePSi). ePSi builds on the earlier Program for School improvement, which helped to improve the learning outcomes of primary schoolchildren (Aturupane et al. 2014). ePSi was designed to bring about a change in the culture of schools, with the ultimate aim of improving the quality of student learning. Recognizing the importance of empowering parents and the wider community, School Development Committees (SDCs) established under ePSi were designed to include parents and other members of the broader school community (school alumni and other well-wishers). The role of the SDCs is to prepare, assist, and monitor the results of school development plans. The SDCs give parents and the community an opportunity to play an integral role in shaping the quality of their school. Moreover, the SDCs provide a platform to engage the parents and the wider school community in any activities that contribute to improvement of their school, such as raising additional resources for school activities. ultimately, through the SDC mechanism, the ePSi empowers parents and the community to improve the quality of their local school and the quality of student outcomes in their local area.

Student learning outcomes are captured in a variety of assessments at the school, national, and international levels. ePSi can further empower the school community to improve student learning outcomes by giving parents and the wider school community a better understanding of (1) what these assessments are designed to do, (2) what kind of information the assessment results provide, and (3) the potential implications of the assessment results for planning interventions at the school level. For example, if the national assessments indicate that a province or district has performed particularly poorly in a certain subject such as english, the SDCs may want to consider using school development grants to develop more activities to improve english language learning in their school. They may even consider working with a group of schools in the area to improve outcomes in this subject. empowering all members of the school