Timor Leste has unlocked a new opportunity to gain valuable insights into foundational learning at the end of the primary education across the country by joining the SEA PLM 2024 assessment cycle. With the upcoming release of results, SEAMEO Secretariat and UNICEF EAPRO with support of the ASEAN-UK Supporting the Advancement of Girls Education Programme (SAGE), engaged the education stakeholders including Her Excellence Ms. Dulce de Jesus Soares, Minister of Education of Timor-Leste, in a strategic workshop in Dili on 24-25 February 2025.
The SEA-PLM initiative 2 is a forward-looking framework designed to ensure that learning assessment data is not only collected but also effectively used to drive systemic improvements. The initiative promotes country-specific insights tailored to Timor-Leste’s education landscape and enhances institutional capacity to use data for decision-making and policy formulation. It facilitates system and school-level collaboration to address foundational learning challenges while also developing monitoring mechanisms to track progress and ensure accountability in implementing reforms. Under this framework, Timor-Leste aims to establish national mechanisms to support the sustained implementation of SEA-PLM and strengthen its education policies based on real-world evidence.
The Strategic workshop initiated the action of evidence-to-policy linkages building upon data gathered from the systematic monitoring of student learning among Grade 5 students in basic literacy and numeracy. This initiative aims to accelerate evidence-based reforms and action in the country’s education system, focused on foundational learning. This initiative, leveraging on survey data, ensures that the results translate into meaningful policies that drive real improvements in the learning experience of children across Timor-Leste.
Sharing session with SEA-PLM Country Workshop participants in Timor-Leste
The discussion articulated the need to develop and formulate a national action plan to effectively utilize SEA-PLM data to shape national education strategies and align future SEA-PLM support and interventions with national education priorities. Additionally, the SEA-PLM Regional Secretariat engaged the Ministry of Education in in-depth technical discussions on the SEA-PLM compendium of items in reading and math, preliminary national outcomes of the 2024 main survey, and discussions on the system-level questionnaires.
SEA-PLM Secretariat, UNICEF and National Team in Timor-Leste gave opening and objective of SEA-PLM country level workshop
The workshop concluded with a clear roadmap for Timor-Leste’s education stakeholders. The Ministry of Education committed to explore the establishment of a national steering committee and develop national action plans to inform ways forward on the sustained implementation of SEA-PLM and advancement of foundational learning. It will expand capacity-building programs for educators and policymakers to better analyze and utilize data, engage in continued dialogue with regional partners to strengthen technical and institutional collaboration, and monitor progress to ensure that the reforms yield tangible improvements in student learning outcomes. The success of this initiative will be measured not just by the data collected but by the policies enacted and the lives transformed through a more inclusive and effective education system.
