As schools prepare for end of year assessments and report writing, it’s good to reflect on the purpose of assessment and what you hope to achieve through its implementation.

Geoff Masters' article “Getting to the essence of assessment”, sets out assessment quite simply.

He says “In reality, there is only one fundamental purpose of assessment in education: to establish and understand where learners are in an aspect of their learning at the time of assessment.

“This usually means establishing what they know, understand and can do. When this single purpose is recognised and taken as the starting point for thinking about assessment, it becomes a unifying rather than fragmenting influence in the field.”

He focusses on four main points:

• Assessments can reveal varying degrees of diagnostic detail
• Assessments can be based on a variety of observation methods
• Assessment results can be used in different ways
• Assessment results can be interpreted in different ways.

The full article can be found here.

For more information, contact:
Peter Lee
Inspector, Primary
peter.lee@bostes.nsw.edu.au
(02) 9367 8191