UNESCO organizes key meetings for advancement in the Third Regional Evaluation Study of Educational Quality

En Viña del Mar, Chile

• © UNESCO / Carolina Jerez

To ensure that the Third Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study (TERCE) addresses knowledge regarding the status and challenges of the state of education in Latin America and the Caribbean, two key meetings will be held in Viña del Mar, Chile. The first is the XXIX Meeting of National Coordinators of the Laboratory for Evaluation of the Quality of Education (LLECE) on 3-4 September 2012 and subsequent training seminar on Analysis of factors associated with learning, to be held on 5-6 September.

Both instances are organized by the Regional Bureau of Education for Latin America and the Caribbean (OREALC/UNESCO, Santiago) and are part of a greater effort to contribute to a better understanding of the challenges that countries in the region face in improving the skills of students.

The meetings are held at a crucial stage in the development of the project, says Atilio Pizarro, Chief of Planning, Management, Monitoring and Evaluation at OREALC/UNESCO Santiago, as "the application of the TERCE pilot has been started, specifically in the northern school calendar countries, and for the next few months and by the end of the year, the pilot will be applied to southern school calendar. Therefore, it will be a good opportunity to exchange experiences on the implementation of the pilot and to make decisions about the next steps that may help refine the procedures, content and quality of the study."

The national coordinators meeting will be a forum to coordinate and plan the short and medium term activities to be developed by the LLECE as part of the final application of TERCE. Specifically, it seeks to create a timeline of the activities of the final implementation of the Tercer Survey and National Module project and gain knowledge about the experience of countries that have already implemented the pilot phase of the Tercer Study: Ecuador, Nuevo Leon (Mexico) and Dominican Republic.

Subsequently to conduct the Training Seminar in Analysis factors Associated with Learning. The event is one of the core activities of the LLECE, as it seeks to strengthen the capacities of countries´ technical teams in order to develop assessment tools and to develop analysis skills, enabling better contextualized results of the application.

With such training, the participating countries can ensure the proper implementation of the evaluations and objective interpretation, generating highly reliable data.

More information:

August bulletin. Latin American Laboratory for Assessment of the Quality of Education (LLECE

• 03-09-2012