In 2012, the Ministry of Education, Afghanistan,
engaged the Australian Council for Educational
Research (ACER) as a partner to support the
development of a national learning assessment
program in Afghanistan. To achieve this goal,
the Learning Assessment Unit of the Ministry of
Education and ACER collaborated to design and
implement the Monitoring Trends in Educational
Growth (MTEG) program in Afghanistan.
MTEG is designed as a long-term monitoring
program with one focus on trends in achievement
outcomes in single classes over time, and another
focus on the growth of achievement in cohorts
throughout the school cycle, from Class 3 through
to Class 9.
The Afghan Ministry of Education’s curriculum
goals speak of students’ learning skills such as
‘reading and writing, using numbers’, and of utilising
those skills to support ‘thinking, reasoning, study,
research, diagnosis and innovation in academic,
literary, cultural and technical contexts’ and in the
‘solving and identification [of] individual and social
problems’ (Afghanistan Ministry of Education, 1390
[2011], pp. 116-117). These goals are reflected in
MTEG’s literacy approach to the assessment of
mathematics, reading and writing. The term literacy
denotes the ability to apply knowledge, skills and
understanding across a range of contexts, both
within school and in extra-curricular settings. Rather
than limiting its focus to set topics laid out in a
curriculum, in MTEG the domains of mathematics,
reading and writing are assessed through tasks that
require authentic use of knowledge (Turner, 2014).
Similarly, the Afghanistan Education Curriculum
highlights the importance of being able to ‘use
the acquired knowledge and skills in solving daily
problems’ at Class 6 level (Afghanistan Ministry of
Education, 1390 [2011], pp. 116-117). The literacy
orientation underpins an approach that is both
curricular and cross-curricular. The assumptions
behind a literacy approach to assessment are
explained in more detail in An Assessment
Framework for Monitoring Trends in Educational
Growth (ACER, in press)