About the project

We would like to thank the National Institute for Certified Educational Measurements, the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic, the Institute of Information and Prognoses of Education, State School Inspection, Central Office of Labour, Social Affairs and Family and the company EXAM, for their willingness to provide information for this project.

A review on the primary and secondary schools is a project of the institute INEKO and its main goal is to provide the general public with information on the achieved results of all Slovak primary and secondary schools. We believe that improved awareness will contribute to a more effective competition between the schools, which will increase their quality in the long-run.

The project was carried out at the beginning of the year 2012 and concerns all Slovak primary and secondary schools (more precisely primary schools, also primary schools with special classes, special primary schools, primary art schools, secondary vocational schools, special secondary schools, grammar schools and music conservatories) that are registered by the Institute of Information and Prognoses of Education. We tried to receive data from the last three years at the time when the project was launched (2008/09, 2009/10, 2010/11). The data is recorded on the central level mainly by the organs of the state administration and speak of the quality of the educational process, or the conditions and achieved results of the student of a given school. Since the results of the students from the primary art schools and musical conservatories are difficult to evaluate on the national level (there is no particular methodology defined for them) we will limit our research to those indicators that are recorded for all the other types of schools.

For the evaluation of the schools, we tried to acquire as many indicators and possible. They must be recorded on the national level, by a renowned institute (public or private), and must be impartial. For this reason, we abandoned our original idea to carry out a survey on non-qualifiable attributes (such as the quality of the technical equipment or the students’ satisfaction). The results could have been biased and incomparable because each school director could have interpreted the questions differently.

After a thorough selection, we put together 32 indicators that describe the conditions in schools. Some of them regard only primary schools, and others regard only secondary schools. Some indicators regard all schools, some data are available for all the monitored periods and others are not. Exact description of the indicators and the schools that they refer to can be found in the section “Methods of Evaluation”. The data are continuously updated. If a certain figure is unavailable, it is possible that it can be provided in a near future by the relevant institution. The data come from the following state institutions: National Institute for Certified Educational Measurements, the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic, the Institute of Information and Prognoses of Education, State School Inspection and the Central Office of Labour, Social Affairs and Family. The only set of data coming from a private entity is the set of information on the competitions and testing, carried out by the company EXAM that the schools participated in.

Not less important than collecting the data on all the schools is their comprehensible presentation. The portal offers a wide range of options how to customize the relevant results. The users can define their own indicators, view them per time periods, and create a ranking of the schools based on their own preferences, for example, if they prefer the quality of Mathematics, or student employability. After setting the relevant indicators, they can specify the schools that are to be compared with one another, based on the type of the school, district, or the maximum distance from the place of residence. These settings provide for a complex comparison of the schools that can help you find the most suitable school for you.

Contact

INEKO

INEKO - Institute for Economic and Social Reforms
Bajkalská 25
827 18 Bratislava 212
Slovakia
web: http://www.ineko.sk
mail: obce@ineko.sk
Tel.: 02 / 5341 1020
Fax: 02 / 5823 3487

Authors

Peter Goliaš
Peter Klátik
Matej Tunega

Said about the project

Andreas Schleicher

In general, the OECD very much supports transparency in publishing results of external school evaluations conducted by inspectorates or other review bodies. Websites like yours have proven to sharpen and make more coherent external school evaluation reporting on individual schools and has heightened their impact on the school community.

In many OECD systems there is a strong expectation of transparency in reporting on aggregate measures of student performance in national tests at the school level. Of course, any “school performance measures” aiming to allow the comparison of schools should be based on highly reliable data – this covers concerns on the test design, sample, response rate and exclusion of students, but also the rigor in test administration and scoring of student performance. There is evidence from different OECD systems that there are risks of reporting such “school performance measures” without providing adequate contextual information on the school to allow a meaningful interpretation of the information. OECD work over the years has underlined the need for careful reporting of these results. Providing robust contextual information on schools can help to avoid simplistic interpretations and conclusions on school quality. Various OECD systems have developed specific measures using statistical techniques to adjust for the school’s socio-economic intake (contextual adjustments) and to show the degree of progress in student scores within a school (the “value added” of a school). Several systems also present an overview of many different performance measures to allow a more rounded and informed picture of a school.

Andreas Schleicher, Advisor to the Secretary-General on Education Policy, Deputy Director, OECD

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We offer the information on primary and secondary schools, which exist on the national level and describe the results of the students, or the conditions for teaching. If people have quality information, they can make better decisions based on them. Therefore, we think that through this project we can help the parents of the future students and the schools as well, because by comparing with one another, they will be motivated to better results.

Rankings do not comprehensively evaluate the quality of a school, but they inform about the students’ results. These results do not consider the differences between the students of individual schools caused by various factors other than the educational process (such as the different social background), they do not cover the whole content of education and they do not assess the added value of a school, that is, what skills and knowledge has the school delivered to its students. Rankings can therefore be a useful indicator when choosing a school, but they should mainly draw the public into the discussion about the quality of schools.

For acquiring a more precise image, the parents should ask the schools about the further prospects of the students, either in enrollment on universities, or when entering the labor market. Important are also information on the performance of the students in various competitions, on the technical equipment, or the structure of the classes.

This project was supported by a grant from the Foundation Open Society Institute in cooperation with the Think Tank Fund of the Open Society Foundations. The project is run by INEKO Institute which is a non-governmental non-profit organization established in support of economic and social reforms which aim to remove barriers to the long-term positive development of the Slovak economy and society. INEKO is not responsible for the full functionality of portals created by INEKO or third parties, or for the accuracy of data displayed on the created portals.