Realizations

Consultation on a project of politics 
on evaluation of the learnings

During the school year 2000-2001, the ministry of Education of Quebec (Canada) published a project of politics of the learnings. With the aim of consulting the concerned groups, the Ministry led a vast consultation from December 2000 till March 2001. This project of statement of politics concerns the general training of the young people, the general training of the adults and the vocational training.

The consultation aimed at knowing the opinion of the persons and the bodies concerned by the evaluation of the learnings on the project of politics and particularly on the relevance and the clarity of its contents. The ultimate objective was to enrich the project by the collaboration of all the milieu of the education. The consultation, both by the choice of the consulted persons and by the method of collection of the information and their treatment, was organized to meet at best this objective.

The consultation was led with four types of persons directly concerned by the education:

• the school committees;

• the public and private educational establishments;

• the partners of the ministry of Education;

• certain administrative units of the Ministry.

Let us remind the method retained to collect the supplied information. A questionnaire was sent to all the chosen groups of persons. Each had to gather in workshop the concerned persons and invite them to answer it by establishing a consensus of the opinions and the recommendations to be passed on to the Ministry. It is thus the opinions of the groups of persons that were recorded in the questionnaire of every group.

The used questionnaire contained three parts. First of all, questions on the general impact of the project of politics. In the second place, questions to judge the relevance of chapters and the appendices of the project which accompany or justify the main part of the politics that are the values, the orientations and the principles of the evaluation of the learnings. The relevance and the clarity of these last ones were examined in great detail in the third part of the questionnaire.

The opinions were recorded on scales suited to every question and comments and recommendations could be added to each. Furthermore, groups of persons chose to present a report or a text which, without answering systematically all the questions of the questionnaire, concerned certain aspects of the project of politics.

Micro Centre Pythagore entrusted the realization of certain technical works for the ministry of Education. Two information sources were then made available: a) a database including the supplied answers to the questionnaire planned for that purpose; b) reports and texts sent by certain groups interested in this question.

Altogether, 1674 groups completed the questionnaire and 72 000 persons participated in the consultation. Furthermore, reports or opinions were sent by 36 groups, by 22 partners of the ministry of Education and the others by administrative units of the Ministry.

The questionnaire contained 23 questions; more than 19 000 comments were made. We wanted to measure the opinion of the participants by means of three statements:

• the politics of evaluation joins within the framework of the reform of the education;

• it allows to direct the practices of evaluation;

• it launches a clear message as for the practices of evaluation to be put on the front.

To realize the entrusted mandate, Micro Centre Pythagore achieved the following activities:

• First, there was examination of the approach of consultation retained by the ministry of Education. Meetings with the persons in charge were periodically held to have the whole necessary information in pursuit of the works. There was analysis of documents distributed during the consultation (questionnaires, text of the project of politics, documents of information from school).

• Questionnaires filled by the bodies had been the object of codification and Informative Technologies data entry. We received the available database. After examination of the received files, the staff of Micro Centre Pythagore prepared a compatible database with the used software of treatment.

• There was production of a set of descriptive statistics (distributions of frequencies, tables of frequencies) from the available data.

• There was analysis of the statistics produced to kick away the trends observed with regard to the various consulted groups. The expressed opinions were examined with regard to the types of groups (educational establishments, school committees, partners of the Ministry, the administrative units of the Ministry) and in the sectors of training (general of young people, adult, professional).

• Micro Centre Pythagore examined comments expressed by the consulted groups. There was grouping of these comments with regard to themes and got in touch to the types of groups and to the sectors of training.

• There was examination of reports and opinions drafted by partners of the ministry of Education and the administrative units of the Ministry. To facilitate the analysis of this information, it was necessary to organize the information with regard to the plan of the questionnaires of opinion used by the school groups.

• A summary of the consultation was presented to the Ministry as well as a set of appendices containing the results of the realized compilations.

Email address: info@mcpythagore.com