Remotely Assessing Foundational Skills of 5-14-year-old Children: A 7-Country Psychometric Evaluation of the Remote Assessment of Learning (ReAL)

Approximately 250 million children worldwide are out of school. There is growing consensus for investing in feasible, contextually appropriate, psychometrically tested, remote tools to support quality education in crisis contexts. Save the Children developed the Remote Assessment of Learning to assess 5–14-year-old children’s foundational learning. Children (N=5,764) were sampled from Cambodia, El Salvador, Mozambique, Niger, oPt, the Philippines, and Sudan, with an approximate 50/50 split in child sex within each country. The study assessed inter-rater reliability, factor structure, item slope and difficulty, criterion validity, and test-retest reliability. The study also explored user perceptions of feasibility and scalability. Results show moderate evidence that ReAL is valid and reliable for literacy and numeracy; evidence for social-emotional skills is weaker. The qualitative results revealed that while the tool is generally perceived as scalable and contextually appropriate, challenges persist with unreliable connectivity, caregiver influence, and comprehension issues in rural and linguistically diverse settings. This is the first cross-country evaluation of a remote assessment of learning.