National Assessment of Secondary Students (NASS)

Developing and implementing a national educational assessment system for monitoring and supporting quality of education is a key investment for ensuring that quality goals of education in Bangladesh will be reached as planned.

AIR provides technical assistance to Monitoring and Evaluation Wing (MEW), Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education (DSHE), Ministry of Education, Bangladesh, in developing, analyzing, and reporting national educational assessments in math, Bangla language, and English for grades 6, 8, and 10. The assistance is provided through a series of workshops for MEW technical staff delivered in Dhaka, Bangladesh, including test design, item development, piloting, psychometric evaluation of items, assembly of test forms, and statistical analysis of data. AIR produced two types of public reports, one targeting education practitioners supporting quality of instruction, and the other designed for policy makers and stakeholders. The latter informs users about the trend in student performance over years, compares performance between different student groups, and analyzes background factors associated with student performance.

The main findings indicate that student performance significantly increased between administration years 2017 and 2019 in all three grades and subjects. There was a gender equity in student performance with a tendency that girls outperform boys in languages (Bangla and English) at grade 10. Urban-rural differences were substantially large in favor of students from urban settings, and differences by school type indicate that general education schools significantly outperform Madrasah based schools.