Assessment vs. Examination…

Mar 24, 2012 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
The National Grade Two Assessment is an examination. It may be diagnostic, but it is an examination. It is an examination simply because it awards a score for what students know. Five per cent (5%) of all the marks that are used to promote students into secondary schools are taken from the National Grade Two Assessment. Similarly, the National Grade Four Assessment is also an examination. Ten per cent (10%) of all the marks that are used to promote students into secondary schools are taken from the National Grade Four Assessment.
Chief Education Officer (CEO), Mr. Olato Sam, is incorrect when he pronounced that “we do not have an examination in Grade Two” (Kaieteur News of 2012-03-12). Kaieteur News reported that the CEO explained that the Grade Two Assessment was never conceived of as an examination – as in the pure sense of examinations – but rather it is a diagnostic assessment in the truest sense of the word. This is a paltry explanation of something which is very unethical.
If the Grade 2 Assessment is diagnostic in nature then how can it be used to promote students into secondary schools as is currently done?
What the Ministry of Education (MOE) is doing, and by extension the CEO, is that they are using a measurement instrument to find out weaknesses and at the same time awarding marks for strengths. This is highly unethical, since a diagnostic measuring instrument is different in composition from a placement measuring instrument. I am sure that the table of specifications, if they exist, will be different, since each will examine a diverse range of skills and knowledge.
As far as I am concerned, the Grade Two Assessment is not diagnostic at all, since there is no diagnostic machinery in place. When is the corrective teaching done with the students who have written the Grade Two and Four Assessments? When the Grade Two and Four papers would have been marked what kinds of reports are sent to the schools? Do these reports specify what topics each student has failed? It would be absolute madness to subject all students to the same corrective teaching. This is what has been happening. A single report is sent to the school and all students are subjected to the teaching of the same topics again and again. In fact, there is one report format for all national standardized examinations.
Of course, all of these pronouncements were made by Mr. Sam as he went out of the way to condemn extra-lessons. Mr. Sam must understand that the Ministry of Education amplified extra-lessons in Guyana. It was this Ministry that introduced the Grades Two, Four and Nine examinations. The more national examinations you have, the more extra-lessons you will have.
Kaieteur News reports that the CEO expounded that an assessment is one that is intended to ascertain what areas students are doing well in, as well as those areas in which they are struggling, so that teachers could be better informed when planning for Grades Three and Four. In theory this is excellent, in reality this is a lie.
The MOE demands that all plans (known as schemes of work) be submitted before the end of the academic year in July. The results for these examinations are released in October. How can teachers plan using these results? The results that are sent are vague and provide little or no help in planning. Sometimes, the Ministry sends wrong results, as happened for the 2011 Grade Nine Assessment, when the raw scores were sent rather than the standardized scores. Imagine how surprised some teachers were when some students got 103% out of 100%! The problem here is that the examination machinery needs to be remodeled.
Mr. Sam needs to get his facts straight or it will be him who is “duping, fooling and even misguiding the individuals of this society”.
Mohammed S. Hussain

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