Ministry of Education Examinations & Assessment Unit Report ^Featured

The Ministry should be alerted that consultations with all its divisions and stakeholders  are  vital  to  the  smooth  and  successful  transition  towards outcome-based  assessment.  More  importantly, the transition  needs  to  be driven educationally but not politically. We have a duty to assess thoroughly, interpret, and use the results to enhance teaching and learning. Our duty includes reporting accurately and honestly to parents on the actual progress and achievements of our students. An informed school community will be supportive of our stand on any national assessment regime.

The purpose of this report is to provoke discussion within the Ministry of Education on multiple issues that the Exams and Assessment Unit are concerned with in terms of Assessment as the transition from standardized testing to outcome-base assessment progresses and consideration of the recommendations from the Examination and Assessment Unit.

Issue 1: Validity of the Inferences to be drawn from the result of the External Assessment

The purposes of assessment are for teachers and users of the examination results  to  make  an “integrated  evaluative  judgments  of  the  adequacy  and appropriateness of inferences and actions based on test scores”. Validity – thus, is judgment that the decisions made as a consequence of the assessment were appropriate, defensible, sound, trustworthy, and legitimate.

The concern:

How can we address validity of the assessment tool (exams) for subjects (e.g Computing & ICT, Mathematics, & most subjects) where only a total of 48 Do Statements are to be assessed from a total of 300+ prescribed in the syllabus? This does not cover at least 25% of what the students were taught.

Can we say that the inferences / decision making / judgment of the child’s performance as measured by the external exams are valid?

Issue 2: Delay in the Ministerial Assent of the Official Curriculum

The delay in the Ministerial making official of the reformed curriculum has posed the following threats to EAU and the schools.

•        Late dissemination of IA Summary & Information Package to schools in 2016.

i.    This is Week 5 (which is halfway through Term 1). EAU will need at most TWO  weeks  to  work  on  constructing  the  IA  Summary  Forms  &  IA Programs for 2016 (given that the curriculum will be made official this week). This will take us through to Week 7.

ii. Teachers  would  also  require  at  least  a  month  to  work  on  their submissions for IA Summary Forms and IA Programs for 2016. This will take them through to the beginning of Term 2.

iii. The implementation of the IA programs in schools depends on when their IA programs gets approved. Experiences from past years saw some IA programs take up to June to be approved.

iv. The late implementation of IA in schools can have drastic effects on the validity and reliability of IA tasks being conducted.

v.  Late implementation of IA Programs for 2016 infers that there will be a delay in the due dates for submission of IA marks to EAU (as compared to past years) & that administering ofIA tasks  in  schools  will  be congested towards end of Term 2 and whole of Term 3. The implications for teachers and students are quite disturbing.

•    The new assessment system that the reformed curriculum entails call for urgent capacity building of teachers to prepare them for this new system. Teacher  readiness  is  the  key  to  the  effectiveness  of  this  reformed curriculum. EAU team in collaboration with CDU team should be out there in the field delivering workshops to ensure teachers are ready to implement the new assessment system in 2016. School visits are due especially to outer-islands to train/prepare teachers to the new assessment system and the required assessment practices & procedures.

The concern:

The Ministry’s initiative to introduce the outcome-based curriculum in 2016 has put schools and EAU to a mad-rush. There is a concern that given the speed with which the reformed curriculum and assessment are being pursued, there is fear that the urgency will drive out the important things.

Is the Ministry’s preoccupation with the outcome-based curriculum at the expense of teachers’ capacity-building, students’ adaptations to change and EAU concerns regarded as being of lesser importance?

Issue 3: Implication on Budget 2016/2017

The ‘raw marks’ that the reformed curriculum intends to report assumes that the mark submitted from schools are valid and reliable. This cannot be verified and is an issue that should be looked at carefully to allow for procedures that will result in the submission of valid marks as well as within the affordability of the Ministry and budget allocation for the Examination and Assessment Unit.

A whole lot of IA tasks in the old system were Teacher-Designed and hence were moderated by the ATLAS program at no cost. In the reformed curriculum, majority of the IA tasks are required to be controlled by the EAU to allow for quality control of marks submitted from schools. As a result, EAU will have to contract more CAT writers, moderators and markers – and it will have financial implications.

The concern:

Is the Ministry ready to finance all the extra costs that the reformed curriculum imposes?   Costing of EAU activities in past years amounted to ~TOP$70,000+. In the reform curriculum, although number of IA tasks has reduced to only two per subject, the number of CAT tasks and tasks requiring moderation visits has tripled; hence costing is likely to be tripled.
 
Issue 4: Accreditation of the Raw Mark Qualification

The  EAU  have  been  receiving  requests  from  parents  for  the  standardized version  of  the  TNFSC  Exam  Results  2015  to  enable  their  children  to  be admitted to NZ universities. This is due to the raw marks qualification not being recognized by NZ universities as it is not in accordance with the New Zealand Vice-Chancellors Committee (NZVCC) Regulation to which all NZ universities act in accordance when assessing applications of Tongan students for admission to degree programs.

The Ministry should therefore attend with urgency to the accreditation of the raw marks qualification in order to allow our students to be admitted to any degree program and university as they wish. The Ministry should lobby in to EQAP, NZQA and universities to identify ways in which our qualification can be recognized by the NZVCC and universities abroad.

The concerns:

1. School leavers not being able to be admitted to universities in New Zealand and further abroad due to unrecognized raw mark qualification as letters from Massey and Auckland Universities indicate that they only recognize the standardized marks that were later issued last month. Most if not all of the form seven and six students were retained here in Tonga.

2.  Students that have to repeat form seven, six and five due to the raw marks.

As only TSC 19%, TFSC 42%, TNFSC 48% passed last year. Very Low pass of form 5 and 6 retains a lot more students at these levels. According to USP they have lowered the pass mark to 200 however students that had marks like say less than 40 marks for mathematics will have to repeat foundation Mathematics and other such subjects like these. These students would not have repeated had their standardized marks been issued and considered by USP like the previous years. The parents and most of the students were penalized for what?

Issue 5:  Piveni’s software

This software is unreliable as a lot of the results were manually checked and they do not match the rest of the correct ones. The results generated by this software are inconsistent. It also requires manual entering and processing of data not automated as the TITAN program.

Piveni’s “quick fix” software is no where comparable to the free and accredited ATLAS program of EQAP which can generate more accurate and has a history of what was entered correctly or incorrectly into the system.

The Concern:

A lot of the results reported so far may be incorrect as we have discovered only a few mistakes manually and also through Re-mark.
 
RECOMMENDATIONS:

1. Tonga continues to use the current prescription (delayed 2 months now) while we continue to amend/change/unpack the current syllabus and start the professional development for the new syllabus this year to be trialed next year.

2. Use only ATLAS program of EQAP (which is free and recognized) on our raw marks and not resort back to the very expensive, need a lot of upgrade and unreliable software of Piveni’s.

3. Work with EQAP on the accreditations of our Raw marks, talk with New Zealand and Australia about our way forward in accreditation of our new raw mark qualification as this is a National Crisis.