KUALA LUMPUR, March 3 — The Education Ministry must push on with the school-based assessment (SBA) as research has shown the programme improves the learning experience for students, CfBT Education Malaysia said today.
Despite widespread criticism, the education consultancy said the programme has proven to also help teachers in planning lessons.
“The Ministry of Education did the right thing in implementing School-based Assessment,” said Wan Saiful Wan Jan and Dr Arran Hamilton, editors of the latest CfBT research report with Oxford University, in a statement.
“It is a common direction of travel in high performing education systems and our research confirms that when implemented effectively it is the single most powerful game-changer in driving up education achievement,” they added.
The duo pointed to a similar programme rolled out in neighbouring Brunei in 1984 as part of its national education reform, saying the country experienced hiccups in the initial stage.
The SBA initiative in Brunei has since shown results, Dr Hamilton said, adding that “teachers, students and parents feeling really positive about the changes to classroom practice and the improved assessment tools that actually help students learn.”
They disclosed that CfBT Malaysia was heavily involved in the Brunei policy reforms.
The group, founded in 1979, said their research showed students learn more when they were given comments only, rather than when graded on their work, such as in the conventional examination-based assessments.
Another plus point to SBA was the timing of feedback; CfBT said research showed students were less able to link their achievements to exams as the feedback period is delayed, besides being more focused on the points scored than how they can improve.
But the group acknowledged there were teething problems with the implementation in Malaysia.
The first was for the Education Ministry to set up a network for teachers through peer-learning communities so they could share ideas and resolve problems, as the old school style of holding briefings were less effective, CfBT said.
The group also suggested the collection of SBA data be decentralised, pointing out that many high performing systems elsewhere chose to collect and store the information at school level to save on time and labour.
Lastly, the group suggested the ministry abolish “high stakes examinations” for students below 17 years old, such as UPSR and PMR.
They argued that such exams were an archaic legacy that acted as a “sorting hat” that were no longer necessary with students moving up automatically to the next level until the Fifth Form.
The group noted that only SPM should be kept as a formal certification for higher education and work.
The three-year-old SBA was recently suspended temporarily by the Ministry of Education to allow for the collection of feedback and complaints from teachers, with the ministry set to fine-tune it before reintroducing it in April.
Schoolteachers have complained that entering students' data into the SBA system online forced them to stay up late, especially with low internet speeds.
SBA was introduced in 2012 for Form One students, while Year One students started using it a year earlier.
