Developing Assessment Principles: The Way to Improve Results

It is often said that assessment is the single most determinant of students’ learning, because it determines their approaches to learning.

That is, if assessment emphasises the reproduction of large volumes of detailed information, learners will learn in order to reproduce and not necessarily to understand.

Therefore, if the testing tasks are superficial, focusing narrowly on information recall, learners’ approaches will also be along that direction. Assessments of this kind are not preparing learners for full participation in work and life after schooling.

Assessment should not be conducted only when learning has ended, but rather throughout the learning period. Thus for it to be conducted appropriately to enhance learning, schools should embrace the idea of developing own assessment policy, which spells out the school’s intentions to conduct effective assessment.

The policy should mirror the curriculum. Principles of Assessment should be one critical component of the policy. The principles should encompass both formative and summative assessment, which are equally important in learning.

It is not uncommon that the principles may differ from school to school, region to region, level to level. Schools differ in many respects, such as size, location, administration, performance in national examinations, or level of operation.

Principles should not be cast in stone. They should evolve to take into consideration experience and inevitable technological, social and environmental changes.

Once the desired state has been achieved, they can be upgraded for continuous improvement. Even if the 100percent pass rate has been achieved, this can be upgraded, say, to quality pass rate.

Its design and development should be interactive and iterative involving all stakeholders at different levels of operation. For ease of implementation, the principles should be written in simple language to be understood by all.

There is no point in developing assessment principles which will be there for everybody to see but hardly implemented or implementable. There is no limit as to how many principles can be formulated, but the guiding principle is your school context.

Assessment principles should be seen as a strategy to improve learning. Instruction is not done to complete the syllabus but to impart knowledge and skills, hence instruction and assessment are intertwined.

Some guiding themes when crafting assessment principles include issues relating to school’s viewpoint on assessment; explicity of assessment criteria; purpose of assessment; validity and reliability; frequency of assessment; data analysis and usage; methods/ modes/ strategies for assessing; stakeholders and their roles; leadership role in assessment.

Below are hypothetical examples of assessment principles:

Example 1: The school strongly believes in assessment as an equal aspect to teaching and learning as is instruction. As such, assessment has been adopted as part of the school’s culture, hence vows to entrench assessment skills in all those involved in the assessment of students, to be competent to undertake their roles and responsibilities.

Example 2: Effective assessment depends upon a set of clear statements of expected student learning; data collected which are meaningful, valuable, and accurate; data which are analysed, not merely tabulated; and results that are communicated.

Example 3: Assessment should be valid. Validity ensures that assessment tasks and associated criteria effectively measure student attainment of the intended learning outcomes at the appropriate level.

Example 4: Assessment should be reliable and consistent. This requires clear and consistent processes for the setting, marking, grading, and moderation of assignments.

Example 5: Assessment should be conducted on all domains of learner development ( cognitive, psychomotor, and affective) for both processes and products.

Example 6: Data on learners’ progress is key to the improvement of learners’ outcomes and for channelling them on their learning paths. The diagnostic assessment shall be key to ensuring the above is achieved. Both pre- test and post- test shall be conducted and analysis conducted to reveal individual learners gain and intervention devised.

Example 7: A compendium of multiple methods, modes, and strategies either quantitative and/ or qualitative, and contexts that reflect the unique nature of subject content, or individuals involved in the process, shall be employed repeatedly to assess the learners holistically.

Example 8: Assessment is a collaborative and interactive process involving different stakeholders, among them students, teachers, parents, Guidance and Counselling teachers, psychologists, and administrators.

It is one thing to develop the principles and another to live them. They are not easy to develop.

No foreigner can develop or nullify the principles you developed for your school.

Indisputably, once the principles are in place and religiously implemented, learning should be meaningful and enjoyable to both the teacher and learner, resulting in improved achievement.

To avert a situation where this will remain just academic, someone with appropriate qualifications should be appointed to coordinate that.

The Author holds Ph. D. in ‘ Assessment & Quality Assurance’ and writes in his personal capacity as a Psychometric Researcher.

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