With the support of the IEA and in cooperation with the partners from Serbia, representatives of the Agency for Pre-Primary, Primary and Secondary Education attended a two-day training in Belgrade from June 30 to July 1, 2022, The director of the Institute for Education Quality and Evaluation, Mr. Bane Ranđelović, opened the meeting while the representative of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievements (IEA), Paula Korsnakova, greeted the participants via video link expressing great satisfaction and gratitude for the cooperation between the representatives of these two institutions. The representative of the IEA hoped the cooperation would continue in the future in order to achieve the highest possible quality of procedural activities in the realization of international studies such as TIMSS and ICILS through joint action and support of the countries in the region.
The meeting was realized in six sessions where all agreed topics related to eTIMSS were discussed. The Agency representatives learned on the challenges and difficulties the Serbian team encountered during the field test. The goal of the meeting was certainly the updating of existing knowledge in developing the test instruments (work with translators, verifications and identification of challenges in the use of AM and OSS). The Agency team also learned on the activities carried out in cooperation with schools and on related challenges when preparing and managing the survey documentation.
It was very important for the Agency team to learn about eTIMSS and the overall procedures, which differ in many ways from administering the paper version of the TIMSS, including: required configurations of laptops for survey, distribution and delivery to schools, how and in what way to use the assigned players. Other discussed topics included: organization of comprehensive survey, support and ways of uploading data, creating databases for export, and working in Vin3S on creating and importing databases.
The partners from Serbia did their best to share their experiences when it comes to the quality of conducting eTIMSS field test. This will certainly help the Agency team to have the best possible approach in administering the eTIMSS 2023 field test in BiH and achieving their own goals.
