The launch of the Southeast Asia Primary Learning Metric (SEA-PLM) and the First Steering Committee Meeting was held in Bangkok on 20 October 2014. SEAMEO QITEP in Science was represented by Mr Reza Setiawan, Ms Lili Indarti and Mr Apep Nurjaman, who participated as members of the Domain Technical Review Panels.
SEA-PLM is a project for primary school children in Grade 5 in the Southeast Asia region. It aims to improve education quality through system level monitoring of learner achievements. The SEA-PLM initiative is a regional approach and will support SEAMEO Member Countries to better measure and understand learning achievement amongst the general population and specific groups. Further, the initiative will support selected technical and analytical capacities of national examination and assessment staff to strengthen ASEAN technical collaboration on learning assessment and standards across education systems.
The initiative is the first of its kind to be based on shared ASEAN values and national curriculum frameworks and aims to provide assessment of higher level complexity and mastery of content. It is a direct response to a need for targeted assessment tools to measure learning outcomes for primary grades. SEA-PLM includes three key learning domains: numeracy, literacy and global citizenship skills and will initially target Grade 5, but possibilities exist to expand the metric to include assessment tools for earlier primary grades.