Assessment in primary schools

This chapter focuses on one of the elements that has been brought to centre stage by restructuring processes, assessment. It discusses the breadth of evidence used by modern primary teachers to establish the extent to which student learning has occurred, including observations, portfolios, projects, and paper and pen testing. It argues that for assessment to inform teachers about student learning proper interpretation of the data must occur, which includes reference to other pupils' performances, whether or not specific criteria have been achieved or how this piece of work measures up to other work that the student has done. It discusses the differences between norm-referenced, criterion-referenced and scale referenced assessment, among other ways of assessing students; and modern techniques of profiling students, the development of curriculum frameworks and the use of assessment as part of the monitoring of students' achievement nationally, at the state level and at the school level.