MOE’s assessment reforms: Why are they so controversial?

The recent academic assessment reforms announced by the Ministry of Education have generated intense debate on whether the move is a good one.

This is not surprising, given how assessment is a central component of education systems around the world and is watched closely by a variety of stakeholders, including schools, educators, professional bodies, parents, employers and the private tutoring industry.

But given how strongly some Singaporeans feel about the upcoming changes, it is worthwhile to have a deeper understanding of the nature and purposes of academic assessments such as tests and examinations.

These are typically carried out to collect information about a person’s knowledge, attitudes or skills that are then used for various purposes.

First, students are often sorted into different classes, streams or schools on the basis of their assessment results.

Institutions of higher education select incoming students largely on the basis of students’ results in school-leaving examinations. Assessment in these circumstances is often summative (focused on summarising students’ learning of the syllabus) and norm-referenced (intended to rank students relative to their peers).

Assessment therefore has important implications for educational institutions, teachers, parents and students.

Secondly, assessment can be used to determine one’s mastery of certain competencies to a pre-determined level for the purposes of certification or licensing, for example, in the case of pilots or doctors.

Such assessment is often criterion-referenced, that is, individuals are judged against a set of specific performance criteria.

Educational institutions, employers and professional bodies are often deeply concerned about this kind of assessment.

Third, assessment can be diagnostic in nature. It can be formative in nature and help identify a student’s strengths and weaknesses in learning.

It can also be used to improve students’ learning by helping them judge their own learning needs and assisting them to meet those needs.

At the same time, assessment results can help teachers design appropriate pedagogical strategies.

Next, assessment data can help provide students with information to assist in making decisions such as which course of study or career path to take.

In addition, assessments that are predictive in nature can judge how well a student will perform in a particular field in the future.

Another key function of assessment is to provide public accountability.

Parents are often keen to know how well their children are performing in school, and may use assessment information to select a school for their children.

Governments want to know how effective national systems are, and many of them watch the results of international comparative tests results such as PISA with intense interest.

A single assessment can often perform several functions such as selecting and certifying students, and providing the public with information about the effectiveness of schools.

All said, academic assessments have proven to be controversial because of their many functions.

It is often difficult to reconcile disparate goals such as competitive selection and diagnosis of students’ strengths and weaknesses in learning.

Assessment reforms, which often result in changes in emphasis on the various functions of assessment, are indicative of changes in government priorities.

For example, the introduction of source-based test items in social studies and history for secondary school students over a decade ago was meant to steer students away from repetitive memorisation and towards critical thinking instead.

The Direct School Admission scheme was meant to signal a broadening of the definition of the term ‘merit’ beyond academic results.

In a similar vein, the latest policy changes to assessment practices are meant to encourage the joy of learning, reduce the detrimental effects of inordinate levels of stress and competition, and further a passion for lifelong learning.

In other words, reforms to assessment practices and the ways in which assessment data are used evoke fundamental questions about the nature and purposes of education.

These reforms attract different responses from different stakeholders.

Many parents are extremely concerned about how assessment reforms may affect their children’s chances for various schools or educational programmes.

There is also anxiety over the fairness, not only of assessment formats, but also of the relative weightages of different assessment components within the admission criteria of educational institutions.

This is exemplified by the controversy over changes in the Direct School Admission criteria and the forthcoming changes in the Primary School Leaving Examination system.

Private tutors may react strategically to assessment reforms by modifying their lessons or offering new courses.

Notably, Education Minister Ong Ye Kung has urged tuition centres not to “undo the change” the new policies are supposed to introduce.

There are also individuals who feel that assessment practices signal the relative importance of various aspects of students’ learning experiences, and that what isn’t assessed formally will be neglected.

They think that current assessment practices pay scant attention to students’ development of 21st century competencies and that assessment systems should therefore be devised to measure the development of these competencies.

At the same time, there are those who maintain that moral values or character attributes are not amenable to quantitative measurement, and that such attempts may instead end up intensifying the current levels of stress and competition in schools.

Besides, students ought not to be extrinsically motivated by tests and exams in order to demonstrate these moral values or character attributes.

In summary, it is unsurprising that the Ministry of Education’s policy reforms to assessment practices have evoked great controversy.

There are many competing functions of assessment, and any reform of assessment practices has direct implications for a variety of stakeholders.

While these stakeholders may share many common goals for education, such as the creation of an education system that brings about intrinsic joy of learning for all students, the devil is in the detail of what exactly such a system would look like in classrooms.

One beneficial outcome of the controversy is a renewal of the national debate over the purposes of education, one that will invariably involve a discussion over what values we hold dear as a nation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Jason Tan Eng Thye is an associate professor of policy and leadership studies at the National Institute of Education.