National Assessment of Secondary Students (NASS)

Developing and implementing a national educational assessment system for monitoring and supporting quality of education is a key investment for ensuring that quality goals of education in Bangladesh will be reached as planned.

AIR provided technical assistance to Monitoring and Evaluation Wing (MEW), Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education (DSHE), Ministry of Education, Bangladesh, in developing, analyzing, and reporting national educational assessments in math, Bangla language, and English for grades 6, 8, and 10. This assistance was provided through a series of workshops for MEW technical staff delivered in Dhaka, Bangladesh, including test design, item development, piloting, psychometric evaluation of items, assembly of test forms, and statistical analysis of data. 

AIR produced two types of public reports, one targeted education practitioners supporting quality of instruction, and the other was designed for policy makers and stakeholders. The latter informed users about the trend in student performance over the years, compared performance between different student groups, and analyzed background factors associated with student performance.

The main findings indicated that student performance significantly increased between the administration years of 2017 and 2019 in all three grades and subjects. Urban-rural differences were substantially large in favor of students from urban settings, and differences by school type indicated that general education schools significantly outperformed Madrasah based schools.