SABER: World Bank develops new tool to assess education systems

SABER: World Bank develops new tool to assess education systems:

The eight policy goals of the SABER-teachers program. Image from the World Bank website.

In response to growing awareness of the impact that teachers have on the quality of education and student learning, the Human Development Network’s Education Sector at the World Bank recently launched the teachers’ component of its System Assessment and Benchmarking for Education Results (SABER).

SABER-teachers focuses on collecting data about teacher policies around the globe, analyzing it, and then disseminating it through user-friendly tools. The primary output will be a set of 10-page country reports that classifies education systems according to eight policy goals for which all countries should aim. Other soon-to-be-released SABER products include a database allowing countries to compare teachers’ policies and a website providing access to all country reports.

A draft paper entitled "What are the teacher policies of top-performing and rapidly-improving education systems?" (PDF) by Emiliana Vegas and Alejandro Ganimian uses previous ‘benchmarking’ research to understand how top-performing and rapidly-improving education systems perform on SABER-Teachers. [...]

These results will be complemented with additional data collected by SABER in the near future. In the meantime, the new SABER-teachers program promises to be a valuable and innovative tool for education policy research. It will enable countries to evaluate their systems and implement best practices to improve the quality of education worldwide.