Monitoring progress towards SDG 4.1: initial analysis of national assessment frameworks for mathematics

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics and the UNESCO International Bureau of Education (IBE-UNESCO) worked collaboratively to support national strategies for measuring learning and to enable international reporting in SDG 4.1 within the Education 2030 Framework for Action. The two institutions understand learning outcomes in terms of specific skills, knowledge, and competencies that students are required to demonstrate, and which are oftentimes visible within National Assessment Frameworks (NAFs). For this purpose, a content and skills Coding Scheme for Mathematics was developed, into which 115 English-, French-, and Spanish-language NAFs were mapped, in order to find ways to link different assessment results and to report them in a globally comparable way. The mapping exercise provided a clear picture of the prevalence of mathematical content and competencies in NAFs, and revealed trends, differences, and commonalities among regions of the world, income classification levels, education levels, and languages. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations that focus on ways for moving forward in monitoring SDG 4.1, and in developing the Coding Scheme into a UNESCO Content Framework of Reference that could be used by Member States to assess and improve the content coverage of their national assessment systems.