Faculty of Education Competitive Grants

Project Title: Developing unbiased measures  for students from different regions and socio-economic backgrounds

Chief Investigator: Dr Kim Cuc Nguyen

Funded by: 2007 Faculty of Education Competitive Grant

Project Summary: To enable the Government to monitor the impact of its investment in the primary education sector, a Longitudinal Framework for Assessment of Primary Students was scheduled for 2001, 2007 and 2011.  The tests from the first assessment will be equated with other assessments to enable the process of monitoring student progress over time.  This project aims to check if student responses to any items included in the 2001 Grade 5 mathematics and Vietnamese language tests cannot be fully explained by the ability of the students and a fixed set of item difficulties but vary according to student geographical locations and  socio-economic backgrounds (SES). The results of the project will provide information for test developers which can be used to reduce bias in future national assessments. In addition, the results of this project will potentially lead to a change test development practices.