It is said in the book titled ‘Fundamentals of Language Assessment : A Practical Guide for Teachers’ by Christine Coombe, Peter Davidson and Dwight Lloyd that ‘One of the many purposes of testing is to distinguish knowledgeable examinees from less knowledgeable ones. Each item of the test, therefore, should have a certain degree of power to discriminate examinees on the basis of their knowledge. This power, called Item Discrimination, is calculated by first ranking the scores from the highest to the lowest and then dividing them into two groups: high and low ‘In short we can say that the testing or evaluation system must have the purpose of identifying the discrimination level of skills, competency and knowledge among the learners of the same grades. Does the existing evaluation system we run talk about this truth? The answer is a big ‘no’ which impels people to talk about the quality of education. The students coming through national assessment system in most of the cases don’t gain confidence of the people concerned. Evaluating public exam scripts effectively
In the existing summative assessment system the evaluation of an examiner is final even though he may be highly liberal, or very miser to award marks or quite new and inexperienced in this line
Masum Billah
It is said in the book titled Fundamentals of Language Assessment : A Practical Guide for Teachers by Christine Coombe, Peter Davidson and Dwight Lloyd that One of the many purposes of testing is to distinguish knowledgeable examinees from less knowledgeable ones. Each item of the test, therefore, should have a certain degree of power to discriminate examinees on the basis of their knowledge. This power, called Item Discrimination, is calculated by first ranking the scores from the highest to the lowest and then dividing them into two groups: high and low In short we can say that the testing or evaluation system must have the purpose of identifying the discrimination level of skills, competency and knowledge among the learners of the same grades. Does the existing evaluation system we run talk about this truth? The answer is a big no which impels people to talk about the quality of education. The students coming through national assessment system in most of the cases dont gain confidence of the people concerned.
In the existing summative assessment system the evaluation of an examiner is final even though he may be highly liberal, or very miser to award marks or quite new and inexperienced in this line. Reason must say that we should not depend only on his assessment as this assessment determines the next step of higher education, job, going abroad and total career of a learner. The whimsical decision of awarding marks by only one individual must not be considered as a final assessment.
There must be at least two examiners. The first examiner will identify the mistakes and errors of an examination script with red ink and award marks in a separate sheet against the index number of the examinee, not on his script. The second examiner will do the same with blue ink. The grading of the examinee will be determined on the basis of average marks given by two examiners. If significant difference is discerned between the markings of two examiners, then the script can be rechecked by a third examiner. In doing so, it will take some more time but things will be full proof. In order to make it more smartly, small number of scripts should be given to each examiner avoiding the present practice and their remuneration should be increased which the board authorities have already announced to make it Tk 15 instead of Tk 12 to examine each script from this year. The system of head examiner ship should be abolished. A head examiner, just checks ten percent scripts which all the head examiners dont do either. It is taken for granted that all the head examiners do it, then what about ninety percent scripts which go unchecked? It keeps ample opportunity to happen anomalies in evaluating examination scripts.
The division of marks allotted for different parts of a question itself rewards students even for giving wrong answers. In the knowledge based and comprehensive parts whatever students write even when the information is not correct, they obtain marks. And more blunder is in the application and higher order skills parts students write whatever they can and think. They get marks even for writing national anthem in these parts.
A tradition and belief has developed that if students fill their scripts with words, whatever nonsense they produce, examiners must give those marks. This belief and tradition gives serious undue privilege to the students who dont have actually no idea about a subject. All these examples clearly shrinks the scope of examining the scripts reasonably. It may be true that the government introduces many plans for bringing about positive change but the inner things go otherwise. These are the facts which constraints and frustrates the noble objective of the government. We found the 2016 JSC examination started on 1st November and ended in 17 November and the result was published on 29 December. The authorities seemed to be in a haste to publish the results without thinking how much damage it causes to the examinees and to the evaluation system itself.
Evaluation system must gain confidence of all. Now examinations take place and millions of students achieve grades, higher grades but people dont have confidence in them.
They want to evaluate and examine them for the second or third time to see their level of skill and competency. When they need to test the students acquired quality ignoring what certificate they achieved from board, then why do we spend so much time, energy and money for this assessment? Things have to be tested well. A huge number of students apply for rechecking the exam scripts every year and it emerges with several thousand more GPA-5 holders. In the name of re-examination a funny thing happens which is a serious violation of human rights. Students dont have right to get their exam scripts re-evaluated by a second examiner in the real sense of the term. Re-examination means just to recount the marks on the top sheet, not rechecking whether the assessment was right or wrong. It means whatever or however the first or the inexperienced or emotional examiner has done with the scripts is exactly right, nobody has the right to recheck it or just accept the result with all its faults.
Bangladesh Examination Development Unit (BEDU) finds it in its research that many students have got marks even though for writing wrong answers and for writing answers to the point marks are not awarded. Why these anomalies occur? Qualified and better teachers are not getting involved in examining board scripts which is a serious setback in the evaluation system and the students are to pay for it. The recent decision to involve the teachers of famous schools to check the copies of board examinations of the government deserves appreciation but still we are afraid whether it can be implemented in reality. These teachers earn several times more in private coaching, so they dont show any interest to undergo hard labour to examine the board scripts even though examining the scripts is a significant part of teaching career. I have seen with my own experience that the teachers of Rjauk College dont examine the scripts of public examinations. The same thing goes with Viqarunessa and Ideal schools and college. Even, the teachers of better educational institutions of district headquarters dont examine scripts.
Generally the teachers of rural schools mainly occupy the centre stage of examining and evaluating the examination scripts of education boards. With some exceptions these teachers lack necessary skills of teaching as most of them have been recruited either on political grounds or by the sweet will of local committee.
These teachers cannot develop questions for conducting their internal examinations. They just copy the questions from guide books but the board authorities rely on getting the national examination scripts checked by them. This is a serious loophole in our current assessment system.
The undeserving candidates obtain higher grades even for writing wrong answers. Most of these teachers cannot go beyond their own boxes. So, for developing questions and examining the scripts of public examination, the education researchers can be engaged along with the practicing teachers which we hope will bring a positive feedback.
The writer works for BRAC Education Program and taught in Cadet Colleges and Rajuk College.
Cell: 01714-091431
Email: [email protected]
