Within the framework of the 10th edition of the Leaders for Education Summit, Elizabeth Blandón, director of Icfes, announced that they will integrate new tests to measure the learning of young Colombians.
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In 2023, more than 600,000 people took the Saber 11 A, Pre Saber and Validation of the Academic Baccalaureate tests. The Colombian Institute for the Evaluation of Education, known by its acronym Icfes, has been a fundamental entity in the evaluation of educational quality in Colombia in recent years.
The competencies that the Saber 11 State exam evaluates for admission to higher education institutions in Colombia are: critical reading, mathematics, social and citizenship, natural sciences, and English. However, Elizabeth Blandón, general director of Icfes, announced during the 10th Leaders for Education Summit that changes and transformations are coming in the measurement of these tests.
Under the motto of “an education for life”, adopted by the National Development Plan , Blandón explained that in the coming months they will launch the pilot of the Ser tests, which seek to not only “evaluate knowledge, but also be , since these are different factors that tend to go unnoticed.”
To put this into practice, Icfes seeks to carry out a “process of evaluation and piloting of the school climate through Saber 11 , which is a voluntary evaluation that takes place two weeks after the date of presentation of the State exam.” .
According to the head of Icfes, these new measurements will not influence the result of the Saber 11 exam, since what it seeks is to identify other aspects related to the social and emotional environment of Colombian students.
“It is important to measure the climate for several reasons, because it allows there to be security, social justice, leadership and the development of elements associated with being, which many times cannot be identified in a knowledge test,” added Blandón.
What do Ser tests measure?
According to Elizabeth Blandón, these new tests seek to evaluate the relationship of young people with other aspects of their school environment such as sports, recreation, physical activity, arts, sciences and the use and appropriation of new technologies and CRESE education strategy, which in turn aims to identify young people aware of reconciliation, social justice and climate change.
For Blandón, the traditional exam was leaving out these other elements that are part of the educational context of young people , highlighting that "when we evaluate the self, we are identifying these elements of the boys that went unnoticed."
The results of this pilot will be announced in December 2023. According to the director of the entity, “these results will be for public use to generate value in public policy and deliver timely and quality information that is at the forefront of transformation processes that the world is experiencing in educational terms.”