Monitoring Student Progress in Reading
Since the 2001–2002 school year, Hungary has administered its National Assessment of Basic Competencies (NABC) nine times to examine student performance in mathematics and reading. Since 2004, all students in Grades 6, 8, and 10 have taken part in the testing. The assessment measures whether students can use their skills and knowledge to solve everyday situations and does not focus on textbook knowledge. The NABC benchmarks student performance along seven levels of competency. School level results are published on a website nine months after the assessment and are available for everyone, while schools and the organizations responsible for them receive additional data analysis software that enables them to study their students’ performance in more detail. Since the 2008 implementation of the assessment ID it has been possible to keep track of individual student development from Grades 6 to 10.10
Mandatory testing of crucial basic competencies started in the first grade of elementary school in the 2006–2007 school year to reduce the disadvantages caused by the differential developmental rate of students. The Ministry of Education provides an evaluation kit called the Diagnostic Development System that measures, for example, students’ social motives and skills, elementary arithmetic, and motor coordination for writing without a fee to all institutes. At the beginning of the 2014–2015 school year, 2,015 of 2,277 schools (88.5 percent) used the assessment on 30,333 students (30.3 percent). This means that 88.5 percent of schools deemed it necessary to assess at least one student.