Testing times for teachers: educational assessment in South Africa

A paper from the Universities of Natal and Sussex describes what South African teachers think of assessment and analyses the dilemmas facing assessment reform. Two examples, taken from the experiences of primary school teachers, suggest that South Africa has the opportunity to implement CA and promote more interactive teaching methods. Nevertheless, entrenched attitudes may make new practices hard to apply.

In Africa where in-service training has been available, it has tended to focus on procedural or bureaucratic functions – such as how to fill in and calculate official mark sheets – rather than helping teachers to understand the rationale and potential of CA. Even where there is a willingness to embrace new ideas about assessment, lack of training and tension between teachers’ values and those which underpin the new assessment order, are serious barriers to change.

The research demonstrates that:

• CA in South Africa has been seen as a technical solution to the education problem of only having one examination.
• Instead of empowering teachers and learners, complex new assessment requirements may alienate them and have damaging consequences.
• Far from achieving the aim of moving teachers from being curriculum implementers to curriculum developers, the assessment practices set out in South Africa's new curriculum model could end up reducing teachers' power.
• Many teachers' attitudes to assessment are still influenced by the apartheid era's emphasis on rote learning of set texts, exams and leading 'ignorant' children to redemption.
• Assessment policy is unclear, partly due to the weak organisation of the national education ministry.
• In the absence of feedback, many teachers who have used new ideas in their teaching practice may be unaware that what they are doing is formative assessment.

The authors warn that CA – and particularly peer assessment – is not easy and depends on the development of considerable practical experience. Outward forms of educational practice may suggest a new assessment regime is being taken up, but without further debate and contextualised examination of these practices, their content may involve the collusion of teacher and learners to maintain the status quo.

With its relatively good provision of resources South Africa has potential to promote CA, transform the education system and empower teachers and disadvantaged students by:

• developing a more coherent and understandable curriculum structure exploring educators' assumptions about assessment
• developing teachers' competence in CA through combined 'off the job' and in-school coaching
• challenging the current attitudes of in-service trainers towards assessment
• ensuring that when teachers receive information about CA that it distinguishes between the formal and informal purposes and does not over-emphasise the former
• ensuring that guidance to teachers on peer assessment does not underestimate power relations in a society where violence is never very far from any child’s experience.