Education, Science and Technology > Education, Training, Science & Technology
Projects and Programs
RELPE (Latin American Network of Education Portals)
All countries in Latin America and the Caribbean are in the process of investing significant resources in making computers available to students. This is seen primarily as a matter of equity, since what is at stake is ensuring access to ICT for those students that do not have access at home. But access to computers is also believed to be a key input in the process of improving the way classes are taught and learning is improved.
Investments in hardware, however, have to be complemented with investments in teacher training and content generation. The Latin American Network of Education Portals is the most ambitious initiative launched at a regional scale aimed at tackling the issue of content generation for digital media at the service of the students and teachers. Once fully in place, it will involve continuing exchange of education materials among a network of 15 national education portals. Each of these portals will be administered by the national Ministry of Education, but the use of common technical and content standards will guarantee that once one unit of content --say, lessons plans for a particular subject, or a virtual experiment- is available in one portal, all the rest of portals in the network will be just one click from making it available in its own national education portal, should that be considered relevant by the respective education authorities. In addition, the project incorporate the proactive search of digital content worldwide, and its translation and adaptation to Latin American needs, for the benefit of all 15 education systems involved.
The Network has been an initiative of the Ministers of Education, and the IDB has supported it through Regional Public Goods Fund financing. EDU maintains technical supervision and monitoring responsibilities regarding the execution of the project.
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UNESCO-OREALC SERCE
One of the areas in which true institutional and technical progress has taken place in Latin American education during the last 10 years has been the development of national capabilities to carry out and analyze standardized assessment test. This is a crucial capacity for an education system, since there are not many other ways available that can tell whether, and to what extent, learning is effectively taking place as a result of education policy and investment. Discussions about the need for effective policies or results-oriented management in education are pointless unless timely and reliable information about learning outcomes becomes available.
The IDB has consistently supported the development of assessment testing capabilities in many countries, through its regular lending program. These national efforts have also received support from regional projects, the most ambitious of which is an initiative of UNESCO-OREALC, aimed at implementing an internationally comparable assessment test in math and language across the countries in the region. The first study (LLECE, Laboratorio Latinoamericano de Evaluación de la Calidad de la Educacaión), in 1998, included 13 countries and was supported with Technical Cooperation resources from the IDB. The second round (SERCE, Segundo Estudio Regional Comparativo y Explicativo) is expected to initiate field work in 2006 and is also been supported by the Bank. IDB funds will be focused on the quality assurance component of the project, directed at maximizing the comparability and reliability of the study's outcome. The Education Units has taken a leading role in putting together IDB support for this initiative in both cases, and it will manage the technical follow up to SERCE as it did with LLECE in the past.
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Coaching Program for Vice-Ministers of Education
During their Sub-regional meeting of the Education Policy Dialogue, the Vice-Ministers of Education from Central America agreed to present the Bank a request for a Technical Cooperation to strengthen the planning capabilities of their decision/making teams. In May 2005 the Bank approved the Program for the strengthening of the institutional and management capabilities of the Education Ministries in Central America, with PREAL (Partnership for Education Revitalization in the Americas) as the executing agency. The program provides high-level consultants that work directly with the Vice-Ministers and their team of advisors to coach them along the decision-making process involving education policies and priority programs.
Participating countries are Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua. After 6 months of execution, each country was working with a selected coach on issues that were identified as critical in their Education Sector Strategic Plans. All six countries chose to work on issues related to management capabilities and to the administration of teacher policies related to in-service training, evaluation and career development. The goals and objectives to be achieved have been identified as well as the indicators to measure progress. It is expected that by the end of the Program each country will have produced a strategic plan and a regional strategic plan that will further strengthen collaboration among countries on the critical issues of common interest.
