Benchmarking ICT use in education

At a fundamental level, attempts to answer many of the pressing policy questions we have about the use of ICTs in educational settings around the world -- and the impact of such use -- are complicated by the fact that we still do not have reliable, globally comparable data in this area.

As hard as it may be to believe -- especially given the large investments being made in this area and the increasing strategic importance of this topic in many countries -- basic answers to many basic questions about the use of technology in schools around the world remain largely unanswered.  Recent World Bank technical assistance related to ICT use in education has highlighted the fact that internationally comparable data related to ICT use in education do not exist -- and that this absence is a problem. Such questions include:

• How many schools are connected to the Internet (and what is the quality of that connection)?
• How many teachers have been trained to use ICTs?
• How many schools have access to sufficient reliable power?
• How many computers are being used for learning purposes in schools?
• In what subjects are computers meant to be used, and to what extent?

Many groups are trying to help find answers to such questions, but until recently many of these efforts have been uncoordinated.  The World Bank is part of a consortium of organizations that have joined together to help explore harmonized approaches to data collection related to ICT use in education.  Most notably, the World Bank participates in an international Working Group on ICT Statistics in Education, led by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS).  This effort is part of a larger international, multi-stakeholder initiative to improve the availability and quality of ICT data and indicators, particularly in developing countries, The Partnership on Measuring ICT for Development.

As part of this process, UIS has released a Guide to Measuring Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in Education, which identifies sets of core and supplemental (extended) indicators.  Other consortium partners are identifying and testing sets of standard indicators related to ICT use in education at a project level and in areas of emerging interest.

Extract by http://web.worldbank.org/