INFORMATIZATION LEVEL ASSESSMENT FRAMEWORK AND EDUCATIONAL POLICY IMPLICATIONS

Seeing the informatization as a measure of the educational policy, we propose an informatization level assessment framework and introduce a composite indicator – Education Informatization Index, calculated as a weighted sum by applying the Rank-Order Centroid method for weight designation. Although it is made up of only two main categories (Educational Policy Implementation subindex and Educational Policy Creation subindex) and a total of six individual indicators, it captures well all the socio-political flows in the educational sphere in the Republic of Macedonia in the past five-year period. Namely, a slight decline of the value of the Education Informatization Index can be observed in 2013 in comparison to 2012, and in 2016 in comparison to 2015. Whereas only the value of the implementation subindex suffered in the first case, the value of the creation subindex suffered, as well, in the latter. Having in mind that policymakers can assess the improvement of a country over time, the methodology and the results can aid in making knowledgeable decisions or in establishing greater commitment to incorporating ICT into the education system.