The Caribbean Examinations Council wrapped up its Capacity Building Workshop last Friday 30 June with Statisticians and Education Planning Officers from Ministries of Education across the region. The workshop was aimed at imparting knowledge about assessment data. It was part of CXC’s Big Data project entitled “Cross-national Comparative Surveys in Education: Models and Methods,” in association with the Inter-American Development Bank.
Director of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) in Germany, Dr Eugenio J. Gonzalez, gave participants and expansive view of large scale testing and assessments. The institute facilitates activities such as development and implementation of large-scale assessments. The topics included Assessment Designs, Implications for Analysis, Principles of Assessment Designs, Implementation of Empirical Comparative Studies in Education and Current Trends in International Large-scale Assessments.
Director of Planning in the Ministry of Education in the British Virgin Islands, Jillian Douglas- Philips said, “The sessions was very informative, I have learnt quite a lot and I know that we will all need time to process the information so that we can actually use the information. It’s good to be exposed to big data analysis, and how to deal with large scale assessment. I must say we have a very leant instructor in Dr. Gonzalez and we are able to contact him after for things we don’t understand.”
Keith Thomas, Education Planning Officer of the Ministry of Education in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, described the workshop as interesting as it was his first time learning about large-scale assessment data. “It’s quite informative and interactive in terms of getting the test scores and what they can be used for policy decision making,” he said.
The countries represented were Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, British Virgin Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Montserrat, St Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Turks and Caicos Islands.