SABER: Innovative Assessment Tool Helps Countries Use Evidence to Drive Global Education Reform

Extracted 28JUL2011 from http://blogs.worldbank.org/education/node/642?cid=EXT_TWBN_D_EXT

At the launch of the World Bank's new Education Strategy for 2020 during the "What Works in Education” Policy Research Colloquium this spring, World Bank President Robert Zoellick urged the international development community to focus on interventions that produce learning results and emphasized the vital role that evidence must play in propelling smart investments in education. The strategy also emphasizes the Bank's role in helping countries move beyond the provision of inputs to a system-level approach for improving the quality, performance, and outcomes of education programs...

The System Assessment and Benchmarking for Education Results (SABER) initiative is being designed to help countries systematically examine and better understand their education system's policies...

Currently under development, SABER aims to help countries align their governance, management, incentives, financing mechanisms, human resources, and quality assurance systems more effectively and efficiently around the goal of raising learning outcomes.  To facilitate the use of a systems approach, SABER's diagnostic tools are structured around key education policy domains, including Teachers, Finance, Student Assessment, Data, and School Accountability and Autonomy.