Educational effectiveness - International Comparison - Essay Example

All these aspects should go hand in hand in establishing an effective educational system. But there is also one new yet already proven method of assessing the effectiveness of the educational system, and this is through international comparison. Comparisons of various schools’ students’ learning across countries are already being done 50 years ago. And recently, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) realized that this will be a good method of analyzing the level of efficacy of the educational system of the major schools around the world (Department of Education, Science and Training, 2005).

Initially, IEA though of comparing the educational system of the schools so as have a clear and unbiased comparative data about the schools’ educational performances. Thus, all levels in an educational system, the teachers, the school administrators, the policymakers and even the educational facilities are being assessed and compared. As the time goes by, IEA realized that comparing the educations’ effectiveness of schools around the world can also give tremendous benefits to schools being compared and even to students and teachers themselves (Department of Education, Science and Training, 2005).

The series of tests or exams for the students, the demo and several teacher valuations are known to be the proven ways of knowing if the students are learning or not or if the teachers are capable of teaching or not. But, the efficacy and efficiency of education per country as a whole cannot be assessed by those two methods. Thus, understanding and analyzing all the concepts and issues behind cross-country comparison of educational effectiveness is a good approach of appreciating education. The results of this paper can provide unlimited benefits to the students, teachers and the schools.

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