IDB launches website to monitor education systems in LatAm, C’bean
WASHINGTON, United States (CMC) — The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) on Wednesday said it has launched a website with education and statistics indicators for Latin America and the Caribbean that seeks to address the needs of policy makers, researchers, media, and civil society to monitor education systems in the region.
The IDB said that the site, CIMA, will also inform the policies that contribute to their improvement.
It said while similar data-collection efforts from other organisations already exist, CIMA offers an intuitive and easy to use platform with information available in Spanish, English and Portuguese that is comparable and relevant for the challenges faced by countries in the region.
“CIMA centralises data from three main sources: harmonised household surveys, learning assessments and administrative data. It currently contains close to 40 indicators that altogether provide a regional education outlook and allow comparisons between countries and years.”
The IDB said users can also browse indicators by accessing the country profiles that explore in detail specific characteristics of each system. These different approaches allow identifying areas in which systems have made progress and those that still require attention, contributing in the process of setting goals for the provision of educational services at the national and regional levels.
“CIMA provides evidence to support informed decision-making that improves the quality of our education systems as well as student learning. We are convinced that, with more knowledge about what our students know and can do, we will be able to ensure that all of them reach the top”said Emiliana Vegas, Chief of the Education Division at the IDB.
The official said that CIMA is more than a statistics portal and should be seen as a holistic project to guide education policies and objectives.
The IDB said in this regard, CIMA hopes to encourage countries to strengthen their data collection and analysis systems, participate in regional and international learning assessments, and evaluate the impact of their education reforms.
“In this manner, they will generate more useful and high-quality information that can be used in policy making. To achieve this goal, CIMA aims at creating a regional network with active participation from the ministries, evaluation agencies and statistics centres to generate and take advantage of quality education data,” the IDB added.
