Rethinking ‘Rethinking Assessment’ | Joseph Mamo

Joseph Mamo is a former head of department (mathematics) at St Ignatius College 2000-2015 and part-time lecturer with the Faculty of Education at UOM

I have been retired from public service for 10 years and before that I headed the mathematics department at St Ignatius College.

I read with interest Jude Zammit’s piece that appeared on MaltaToday entitled Rethinking Assessment: A Fairer And In-depth Method Through School-based Assessment. I must immediately state that I am in favour of school-based assessment (SBA). Different students learn in different ways and there are aspects of learning that cannot be assessed solely through examinations. SBAs, as Mr Zammit pointed out, have the potential of “aligning assessment with learning,” encouraging students to “take responsibility of their learning and develop critical thinking, collaboration and creativity.”

But is this what has taken place in classrooms over these past three years?

Zammit claims that not only will the SBA system “improve the quality of learning by putting it in the real classroom setting” but that standards will not be lowered. Hopefully this will be the case, but is this what is happening?

One of the main problems with SBAs is that they are left solely in the hands of teachers. Is Zammit sure that teachers are using “a variety of ongoing assessments that better show that students actually know and can do”? Some time ago I asked two parents whether they were in favour of SBAs. I was shocked when they declared that they preferred the old system. When I asked them why, they declared that in their children’s school, SBAs in maths consisted of regular tests with the results that the students are feeling more tension than before. “At least,” one of them stated, “before my son was tense twice a year, but now it happens every month.” This may not be happening in all schools, but then it would be even less fair. So, I think that unless constant monitoring of how SBAs are being implemented takes place in state, church and independent schools, we cannot be sure that quality of learning will improve. Indeed, it can make matters worse.

Zammit declares that “traditional exams favour memorisation and test-taking over comprehension.” I feel that this is quite a simplistic view of examinations. As head of mathematics department, I was involved in the setting of examination papers in state schools for many years, and I can assure him that we always sought to assess more than simple memorisation.

True there are, as I have already pointed out, skills that traditional examinations cannot assess and this is where SBAs can play an important part. As department head, I was involved in many initiatives that sought to diversify the teaching of mathematics such as the use of ICT, investigations and inquiry-based learning. The success of these initiatives, in my opinion, was rather limited, perhaps because they couldn’t be assessed by traditional means. Hopefully, SBAs will facilitate these alternative ways of learning.

What is, I feel, most unclear about the SBA system is whether reliability in assessment from one school to another, from one class to another is maintained. This is a most important aspect. The process of paper setting for exams involves not just the setting of the paper, but the production of a complementary marking scheme, whose aim is to ensure that teachers’ marking of papers is reliable. Indeed, to ensure reliability, one of the duties of a head of department is to moderate the marking of papers to ensure that teachers have adhered to the marking scheme. Is this aspect of assessment an important element with SBAs?

As Zammit points out “problems will arise” as “any worthwhile change is difficult.” It is important the curriculum takes a look back over this first experience of SBAs and address the problems which I have highlighted.