Assessing what counts: findings from a grade 1 mathematics national diagnostic assessment in Lebanese public schools

Source abstract

Introduction This study examines performance in Lebanon's 2025 National Diagnostic Assessment (NDA) in Grade 1 mathematics, administered by the Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MEHE) across public schools. The assessment evaluated student performance in Natural Numbers, Addition and Subtraction, and Geometry using 29 scored items, with Geometry represented by a single item. Methods Data from 18,418 students across 818 public schools were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics, supplemented by school-clustered mixed-effects models to account for the nested structure of the data. Results The overall mean score was 15.62 out of 29 (53.9%), below the MEHE 60% threshold. At the domain level, 45.4% of students were classified below the defined proficiency threshold in Natural Numbers and 61.6% in Addition and Subtraction; the corresponding figure for Geometry was 51.9%, based on its single-item measure. Item-level results identified weaknesses in areas including place value, multi-digit addition, and missing-addend reasoning. Although statistically significant gender and governorate differences were observed, their effect sizes were generally small, while school-level ICCs indicated substantial between-school variation (21.1%-31.9%) in continuous achievement outcomes. Discussion The findings point to widespread challenges across Lebanon's public-school sector alongside meaningful variation between schools and governorates, rather than a uniformly distributed pattern of achievement. These results are interpreted against Lebanon's current educational challenges, including the economic crisis, teacher attrition, reduced instructional time, and recurrent school closures. Accordingly, targeted policy measures and recommendations are proposed.