Saber tests and emergency educational strategies: a multilevel analysis

Abstract

As a starting point, it is recognized that society is vulnerable to emergencies, which can disrupt the provision of social services. In this context, the objective of the study is to analyze the relationship between emergency educational strategies and student performance on the SABER 11 exams in 2020 and 2021. To avoid bias, it is essential to understand that outcomes depend on hierarchically nested factors: students, schools, and departments. Therefore, a quantitative methodology based on a multilevel model was applied. The analysis included 371,872 cases from 2020 and 344,959 cases from 2021, covering both public and private schools across the country. Results showed that interactive digital strategies, particularly platforms and applications, maintained positive effects on reading, mathematics, and science during 2020 and 2021, with slight increases in their coefficients in the second year. In contrast, traditional strategies such as radio, television, and printed guides were consistently associated with negative effects, although with smaller variations in magnitude. These findings confirm that the effectiveness of emergency educational strategies is not neutral and depends on both students’ sociodemographic characteristics and institutional context. Moreover, mathematics emerged as the most sensitive subject to the lack of teacher support and limited connectivity, highlighting the need to prioritize specific interventions in this area. Based on these findings, it is recommended to promote combinations of digital resources that leverage their interactive potential, design differentiated strategies tailored to student profiles, and strengthen institutional capacity to ensure accessibility and educational equity.