IIDedu, as the secretariat of ASER Bangladesh, has completed its Field Trial 1 (FT1) as part of its ongoing assessment initiative, ELANA (Early Language and Literacy and Numeracy Assessment), in the district of Gaibandha in partnership with Udayan Swabolombee Sangstha (USS). ELANA is a digitally administered citizen-led assessment (CLA) tool designed to measure the pre- and post-numeracy skills and the oral language acquisition, reading, and comprehension skills of children in the age range of 4–10. It is one of the earliest attempts at designing a common assessment framework, aiming to collect evidence about children’s early and foundational language and numeracy competencies that are aligned to SDG 4.2.1 and SDG 4.1.1(a).
Before the trial took place, IID organized 2 days of rigorous training in which the volunteers developed a conceptual understanding of the assessment initiative and learned about various technical and practical aspects of conducting the assessment through interactive group sessions and mock tests. After the training phase, a total of 16 volunteers began collecting data from house to house for a 3-day-long field trial from December 15, 2021, to December 19, 2021, including a 1-day mock trial. A total of 600 children were assessed during the trial from 5 villages.
The ELANA initiative is a collaboration between ASER Bangladesh, the PAL Network, ASER, and the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), and it comprises three major field trials as part of the assessment tool development process.
