International practice in school-based assessment
The international trend in assessment in schools is towards school-based assessment, with many places like Hong Kong introducing a school-based assessment component into the formal examination system, or even dropping external examinations all together. Some examples of current international practice include:
School-based assessment has been established practice in Australia for over twenty years, with states like Victoria including up to 50% or more school-based assessment in its final examination programme, http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/vce/studies/english/EnglishASM.doc. In Queensland where SBA was introduced in the 1970s (Sadler 1987) SBA is used for 100% of marks in secondary schools, http://www.qsa.qld.edu.au/yrs11_12/assessment/sch-base.html. The Australian Capital Territory (ACT) also uses only school-based assessment for senior secondary level, http://www.decs.act.gov.au/bsss/assessm.htm
New Zealand also has a long history of school-based assessment in the senior secondary school, http://www.nzqa.govt.nz/ncea/acrp/secondary/5/5.html, and has developed a wide variety of teacher support material and associated research studies, http://arb.nzcer.org.nz/nzcer3/research/research.htm
In England, school-based assessment has also been developing for a long time. The Assessment Reform Group (see Appendix I: Useful reading and web resources on assessment), http://arg.educ.cam.ac.uk/CIE3.pdf led by Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam of King's College London, has been a powerful influence for assessment for learning, with their work being widely promoted by the Hong Kong Education and Manpower Bureau.
In Scotland similar work is being conducted by the Scottish Assessment is for Learning (AIfL) group, http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/assess/index.asp. Their project 'Assessment is for Learning' is being supported by the Ministry of Education in Scotland and again has involved many classrooms.
School-based assessment has been the standard mode of assessment in Canadian schools for many years with teachers taking responsibility for all assessment processes and judgments at the school-level, although there is concern about use of externally-developed tests in this process, http://www.cdnprincipals.org/CAP%20Position%20on%20Student%20Testing-Version1.doc
School-based assessment is also increasingly seen as a valuable tool for South Africa, http://www.polity.org.za/html/govdocs/policy/assessment.html, and other southern African nations such as Ghana and Zambia (Chisholm et al 2000; Pryor & Lubisi 2002; Pryor & Akwesi 1998).
There is increasing reliance on school-based assessment in many other countries around the world, including Sweden, Finland and Ireland.
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 To view Prof Liz Hamp-Lyons, SBA Project, The University of Hong Kong, talking about international practice in school-based assessment. |
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